Heat
by Iniga
Summary: Five rough moments in Booth's life have a few things in common. The sixth is different. Three chapters pre-Bones; Killer in the Concrete tag; Conspiracy in the Corpse tag; and a final goodbye to Hank. Complete! Thanks for reading and reviewing.
1. Pennsylvania

**Heat**

 **Summary** : _Five times Seeley Booth didn't want to be comforted, and one time he did. This fic should really have Hank tagged as a character, but he's not on the list. What's up with that? Booth has shot people for less than that kind of disrespect to Pops! Anyway, we begin in 1980s Pennsylvania._

 **Spoilers** : _For the whole fic, through season 10. This chapter through season 5 or so._

 **Disclaimer** : _I don't own Bones._ _I am not making any profit or doing anything other than amusing myself.  
_

 _1\. Pennsylvania_

For a few years after his mother left, he held out hope that things would get better. Sometimes that hope seemed justified. The Phillies won the World Series and he was there to see it with his dad. It was the fantasy of every kid in the world, or at least every kid in Philadelphia, come to life. That alone kept him hanging on for months as he was holding up his arms in a futile attempt to ward off his father's fists.

When he lost hope, he hung onto Jared. Jared was a baby. (Jared always felt like a baby to Seeley no matter how old they both got.) Jared couldn't handle their father all on his own. He needed Seeley for a little while longer.

When Jared wasn't enough, either, Seeley comforted himself with the fact that there would be an end.

Their father owned guns.

He knew how to shoot- quite well, in fact, by the time he reached the ripe old age of thirteen. He rolled his eyes at the irony. When his father was sober, he praised Seeley's natural talent with a gun. "My Seeley shoots better than half the men in uniform," Edwin Booth would boast to the regulars at Burke and Payne Barber Shop. But only when he was sober.

Edwin Booth was almost never sober the summer that Seeley Booth was thirteen.

Father Matt, the head of the Booth brothers' school, said that suicide was a sin, but Seeley was past caring. Hell wasn't going to be worse than five more years of beatings and screaming and constant dread in the pit of his stomach. Life wasn't going to be a picnic when he turned eighteen, either. He didn't have the money for college. He wasn't good enough for the military.

That was what Seeley focused on when Edwin lost his temper.

Some day, Edwin would leave the guns unlocked, or Seeley would get better at picking locks.

Some day, Seeley would shoot himself in the head and it would all be over.

He dreamed of it on the hot August night that Jared whined too loudly about not getting the ice cream he had been promised. Philadelphia in August was a special kind of hot and Seeley could hardly blame Jared for being irritated about the ice cream. Truth be told, he could have done with some himself. But Seeley was smart enough not to complain about the broken promised.

Jared would have been smart enough not to complain on most days, but he was only eight, and eight-year-olds were forgetful. When Seeley had been eight, he'd been innocent enough to think that everything would be all right if only the Phillies did well in the playoffs. So Seeley couldn't really blame Jared for his moment of weakness even as he shushed him frantically.

"Shut that kid up," said Edwin.

"He's shutting up, sir," Seeley returned. Usually the _sir_ was helpful. Usually Edwin took it as a sign of respect.

That night wasn't usual. The heavy, suffocating August humidity had taken its toll on Edwin, too. " _Sir_?" asked Edwin. "You making fun of me, Seeley? You mocking my service to our great country?"

"No, sir," said Seeley instinctively. He bit his tongue hard when he realized what he'd done.

Edwin took off his belt.

The blood drained from Seeley's face. He was used to Edwin's fists, but the belt was a different story.

"Hands against the table, Seeley," said Edwin. "Shirt off."

"It was me, not Seeley!" Jared objected loyally, as if Seeley was going to let his younger brother be the one to take the beating. Seeley was older, and soon Seeley was going to be gone. Jared would take all the beatings then. It was unfortunate but Seeley didn't see another way.

So Seeley submitted.

He wasn't sure how much time passed between the first blow and the moment that Edwin grabbed him by his hair and slammed his head, hard, against the kitchen wall. Jared's screams in the background seemed to belong to another time and place. He felt bile rising in his stomach, but his consciousness was elsewhere for the actual act of vomiting.

The pain in his head increased. His body ached.

Edwin barked that Jared should clean up the mess. Jared sniveled that he would.

Jared didn't even do a bad job of it, really, and Seeley fuzzily thought that they had made it through another day successfully when he and Jared dragged themselves upstairs to their bedrooms.

Edwin was back at the bar.

The house was quiet.

Jared deserted his own bed in favor of Seeley's almost immediately, and Seeley didn't have the heart or the energy to tell him to get out because it was much too hot to share a bed. He listened to Jared sniffling tearfully beside him until he fell asleep.

* * *

The next voice Seeley heard was familiar and comforting.

That didn't mean he wanted to wake up.

A gentle, calloused hand rubbed his shoulder. "Come on, Shrimp. It's going to be a long day."

They were all long days. He couldn't keep a groan from passing his lips.

"Maybe we'd better get you to a doctor," the voice mused.

Seeley's eyes flew open. His father would not like that at all.

"I'm up," he croaked hastily. He sat up so quickly that his head spun as his feet hit the floor. "Pops?" he asked when he managed to focus properly on his grandfather's face. "When did you get here?" He looked at his bed; Jared was gone. "Where's Jared? Is he all right?"

Hank fixed Seeley was a penetrating look that Seeley didn't like at all. He loved Pops, but at the moment he just wanted to lie down again and sleep until his body didn't feel like one giant bruise. "Jared is downstairs eating breakfast," Hank said quietly. "Why wouldn't he be all right, Seeley?"

Seeley clamped his lips shut hard. Edwin had always made it clear that what happened in their house stayed in their house. He would not appreciate it if Seeley regaled Hank with tales of the previous night.

"I see," said Hank, as if Seeley had answered his question. Had Jared said something? Jared was smarter than that, except when he wasn't. That was the problem with little kids like Jared. "How are you feeling? Do you need a painkiller?"

"No," Seeley lied. He'd grab the bottle of Tylenol from the bathroom himself. There was no need to confirm anything that Hank might think he knew.

"Then get dressed and eat and start packing." Hank flashed a bright smile at Seeley that Seeley couldn't help returning. "You and Jared are coming to stay with your grandmother and me for a while."

"Really?" Seeley couldn't hide his delight. He loved visiting his grandparents and hadn't expected to see them again so soon after they'd spent Fourth of July week together. On a more practical note, the bruises on his back might get a chance to heal before something set Edwin off again. Like Edwin, Hank was tough and strong and had spent years in the military. Unlike Edwin, Hank almost never lost his temper.

"Really." Hank ruffled Seeley's hair and kissed the top of his head. Seeley was old enough to object to that kind of thing for form's sake, but no one was around to see so he didn't bother. "Hustle up, Shrimp."

* * *

A few hours later, Seeley and Jared piled into the cab of Hank's truck. Hank told Jared that he should sit in the middle because he was the smallest, but when Jared complained that he wanted to sit by the window, Seeley volunteered to take the middle seat.

He didn't volunteer because he felt safe pressed against his grandfather's side, he reminded himself sternly. He volunteered for some other reason. A _good_ reason. Taking care of Jared and making sure Jared had whatever he wanted was a good reason.

He watched his grandfather's hands on the steering wheel and noticed for the first time that Hank's knuckles were bruised. Just like Edwin, Hank had hit someone last night. Since that someone wasn't Seeley or Jared, Seeley didn't really care.

They drove west out of the city and stopped twice in Lancaster County: once for the ice cream they hadn't gotten the day before (now Seeley _really_ thought that Jared had told Pops absolutely everything) and once for homemade root beer from one of the roadside stands that seemed to appear every mile or so. Jared asked why the Amish all made root beer, and Seeley didn't hear Pops' answer because his head was pounding again.

Damned if he was going to ask for more Tylenol, though. He had made his decision. He clenched his jaw against the pain, told Jared to take his turn in the middle, and leaned his head as close to the open window as he could. He barely noticed as they left Amish country and wound their way to his grandparents' house.

He blinked in confusion when the truck stopped and nearly fell to his knees in his grandparents' gravel driveway when Jared leaned over him to open the truck's passenger side door.

"Are you okay, Seeley?" Jared asked with real concern.

"Fine," Seeley answered through gritted teeth.

Jared looked singularly unconvinced.

"Go find your grandmother," Hank ordered Jared. "I'll take care of Seeley."

Jared hesitated.

"I'm fine. Go," Seeley barked, and Jared went.

Hank draped an arm over Seeley's shoulder and steered him to the swing on the front porch. Seeley had loved that swing back when he'd been Jared's age and younger.

"If there's a breeze anywhere today, it'll find us here," said Hank as he sat beside Seeley and gave the swing a push. The air on his face made Seeley feel a bit better, but his stomach lurched again at Hank's next words. "I know your father hits you sometimes, and that is not acceptable." There was no room for argument or denial.

"Is that what Jared said? Jared's a little kid. He exaggerates."

"Jared's a little boy now, but sooner than any of us think he'll be a man. I wouldn't want to see him grow into the kind of man who wouldn't do whatever he could to help if his brother was in danger."

"I'm not in _danger_ ," Seeley objected. "It's been really hard for Dad since Mom left. Jared doesn't remember her so he doesn't get that. And sometimes when he thinks about Vietnam…" Seeley wasn't precisely sure what the Vietnam War had to do with this, but he knew that it was something. "Anyway, he does the best he can."

"You love your father, don't you?" Hank asked so quietly that Seeley almost didn't hear him.

"Of course," said Seeley. There wasn't any other option. When someone asked whether you loved your family, you said yes.

"It's going to be hard on you not seeing him," Hank said, and Seeley wasn't sure if it was a statement or a question.

"Why won't I see him?" Seeley asked, not sure whether he was happy or sad. "How long are we staying here? School starts next month."

"I think we'd better register you and Jared to go to school around here."

Seeley shrugged. He'd changed schools half a dozen times, bouncing between public schools and Catholic ones. It never bothered him. He made friends easily, but didn't like to stick with them long enough to have to explain why he never invited them to his house. _I'm afraid Dad will get drunk and hit me in front of you_ just didn't roll off the tongue when someone angled for an invitation.

"But Dad's coming back?"

"I don't know, Shrimp. He had to leave unexpectedly."

"Without saying goodbye?" Seeley mentally shook himself for asking such a stupid question. His mother hadn't said goodbye, either.

"It was last minute. It was lucky that I was in the area to bring you and Jared home right away."

 _Home_. Was this home now? Seeley decided that he wouldn't ask because he didn't want to know the answer. "Jared didn't call you?" he asked instead.

"No," Hank confirmed. "Look, I want you to start making a list of things you need that we didn't bring today. Write it down every time you notice that you don't have something. I'll either drive back to your dad's house and get it or we'll get you something new."

Seeley nodded his agreement. His head didn't hurt any longer. Everything felt better at his grandparents' house.

* * *

Even though Hank had told Seeley and Jared that they would be living with their grandparents for the foreseeable future, for the first week Seeley couldn't convince himself that this was anything beyond a visit. Every time a car passed, he expected to see Edwin behind the wheel; Edwin knew perfectly well how to find them, having grown up in this house himself.

It truly hit him that his world had altered irreparably when his grandmother escorted him, along with Jared, to the pediatrician's office for a back-to-school checkup. Seeley got one shot; Jared got three. Neither Seeley nor Jared had ever been bothered by vaccinations. Unlike their father's fists, the prick of a needle didn't hurt for long.

The doctor asked the usual questions about whether they could see and hear and whether anything hurt. Those questions were easy. Yes, yes, and no.

"Are you afraid of anyone?"

Seeley couldn't help catching Jared's eye to remind him not to answer. Unfortunately, the doctor noticed.

"Who are you afraid of?"

"The nuns at my old school," Seeley answered hastily. Both Jared and the doctor laughed, and Jared, who had a disconcerting way of charming adults, convinced the doctor that that was really all either of them had thought about when they'd heard the question.

"What sports did you play at your old school, Seeley?" the doctor wanted to know.

"Basketball and baseball."

"No football?" The doctor sounded surprised. "An athlete like you?"

"My old school didn't have a football team."

"Eighth grade at your new school does. Do you want to try out? I'll sign the paperwork that you're okay to play football if you decide that you want to."

A wave of excitement broke over Seeley. He couldn't wait to play football. And basketball. And baseball. He loved being recognized, on sight, as _an athlete._ He was ready for a new church, and a new school, and new teachers and friends and teammates that his grandparents would let him invite to visit on Saturdays.

He was practically skipping as he left the doctor's office. Jared caught his good mood, and as they headed to the schools for registration their grandmother remarked that she'd never seen two boys so happy to have gotten booster shots.

Seeley's new school was a bit smaller than his old one, and there was something more relaxed about it that came with being in the suburbs rather than the city. The eighth graders didn't have much say in what classes they took, which was fine because Seeley didn't care very much anyway. He did happen to meet the math teacher who doubled as the eighth grade basketball coach; the man's eyes lit up when Seeley told him that he played point guard.

Yes, Seeley was going to like it here.

Then it was time to go to Jared's elementary school. Seeley waited in the office while Jared bounced through the halls and charmed every teacher he met. He wanted a minute alone to bask in the glow of the way the basketball coach had looked at him. _An athlete like you?_ The doctor had said. Seeley was going to break records. Maybe he'd go to college after all. Maybe he'd go on an athletic scholarship.

Apparently the secretaries in the inner office didn't realize that Seeley had stayed behind, because as soon as Jared's happy shouts retreated down the hallway, the gossip began.

" _Two boys? At their age?"_ one whispered far too loudly.

" _They're their own grandchildren. I went to school with Edwin Booth. I heard that he's one of those men who wasn't quite right when he got home from Vietnam. What else were they going to do?"_ The second voice was kinder, but only slightly. Seeley flinched at the mention of his father. It hadn't quite occurred to him that people in this area knew Edwin and would look at his sons accordingly.

" _I suppose. Jared is a sweetheart, at least."_

" _Oh, he's adorable."_

" _And he's young enough to bounce back from whatever happened with his parents. He won't give the Booths much trouble. But a teenage boy coming out of a bad situation? One who's already built like a Mack truck? I don't wish dealing with that on anyone, let alone two people who should be enjoying their retirement in peace and quiet. No one likes thirteen-year-old boys. They're the worst."_

" _Thirteen-year-old boys don't even like themselves."_

She wasn't wrong.

" _Edwin will probably come back for them anyway."_

All of Seeley's thoughts of sports and friends and college scholarships faded as quickly as they had come.

Things weren't really any different than they had been a week before.

He'd been too much for his mother, who had been an artist not meant to be tied down by children.

He'd been too much for his father, who had been driven to drunkenness and fits of temper before leaving without a word, just as his wife had done.

Naturally he would be too much for his grandparents.

And then Edwin would come back, angrier and drunker than ever before.

* * *

That evening, when his grandparents took Jared for a walk around the neighborhood to say hello to a family just returning from a vacation, Seeley begged to stay behind. He claimed that it was too hot to go outside, and everyone accepted the excuse.

His grandfather, like his father, had been a military man. His grandfather, like his father, owned guns.

It only took ten minutes to find the box that he was sure contained firearms. Seeley swore under his breath. Like Edwin, Hank was very conscientious about keeping weapons under lock and key.

Seeley left the box on his bed and went looking for the key. He found a set of keys in a junk drawer in the kitchen, but none of them seemed to fit. He snarled with frustration. This was the perfect situation. He had no future, but Jared did, and Jared was with people who could take care of him. Their grandparents would be so attached to him by the time Edwin came back that they would beg to keep him. It would be easier with Seeley out of the picture.

"What are you doing, Shrimp?"

 _Shit_. Seeley hadn't heard Hank approach. Edwin had had the same quiet walk. Seeley wondered if they'd learned it in the army or if it was some weird hereditary thing that he and Jared had missed.

"I wanted to see your guns," he said, trying to sound innocent.

"Mmm-hmm," murmured Hank non-committally. "Why didn't you ask?"

"I didn't want to bother you."

"Let me be very clear," said Hank, and Seeley felt a thrill of terror. Disappointing Pops was almost worse than infuriating Edwin. "You will never touch a gun without supervision. I know that Edwin taught you to shoot, and if that's something that you want to do I will take you to the range for target practice myself. I'm going to replace that lock with one that doesn't have a key so that you won't be tempted. Regardless, do not try this again."

"No, sir," Seeley replied ashamedly.

"I don't want you to be hurt, Seeley, and I don't want you to hurt anyone else."

"I'm a good shot," he protested, although he wasn't sure why.

"You're good at practically everything, and all of that goes down the tubes if you accidentally shoot yourself."

Seeley nodded. He couldn't explain that it wouldn't have been an accident if he had followed through and shot himself. Looking at his grandfather's worried face, he didn't know whether he would have done it.

"We love you. Your grandmother and I, and Jared, and your parents, too, even though they aren't here. We couldn't stand it if anything happened to you. It was bad enough seeing you with belt marks on your back. Do you think I want to see you with a bullet hole through you?"

"No."

"Go down to the kitchen and wait for me."

* * *

His grandparents' kitchen didn't look anything like his father's kitchen, but Seeley couldn't help imagining himself taking off his shirt and bending over the table and waiting for the sting of the belt.

When Hank arrived, he glanced at Seeley but didn't say anything. Instead, he removed bread from the breadbox and butter and cheese from the fridge. It was the strangest start to a lecture Seeley had ever experienced.

"... You're making grilled cheese?" he asked when the suspense got to be too much.

"I make the best grilled cheese in the world. Of course I'm making grilled cheese. Would you tell Michaelangelo not to paint?"

"I didn't say you _shouldn't_ ," said Seeley, who figured that he was in enough trouble as it was. "I was just surprised."

"Surprises can be good. I have one for you and your brother tomorrow morning. It will be a very, very cool surprise."

" _Nothing's_ cool," Seeley retorted. "It's ninety degrees outside."

Hank turned and winked at him before dumping the grilled cheese on a plate and pushing it in front of Seeley. "You need your energy if you're going to play three sports this year. Although my understanding is that the basketball coach would like to lock you up to keep you safe until basketball season. Imagine if I'd let you shoot yourself. He'd probably shoot _me_."

"I'm sorry," said Seeley, and he was.

"I want you to know how to handle a gun. Jared too. It's an important skill, but it's not one that you can practice on your own until you're older. Much older. Old enough to enlist."

"You think the army would take me?"

"They'd be thrilled to have you," said Hank. "Personally, I'd like you to go through college first, but I'd be proud of you either way."

It seemed possible again. Seeley bit into the grilled cheese to avoid saying anything.

The grilled cheese was delicious.

"This is _amazing_ , Pops."

"Of course it is," said Hank, as if it was borderline offensive to remark on something so obvious. "Do you know who John Wilkes Booth was?"

"Fucking traitor assassin," Seeley muttered.

"Don't use that language around your grandmother," said Hank mildly. "Or your teachers. Or in church."

"I won't."

"Good. You know that we're related to him?"

"That's not our fault."

"No, but it's the first thing people think of when they hear the name _Booth_. That's one more reason to be careful around guns. The most important thing is safety, but you don't want to follow John Wilkes Booth's legacy, either."

"I'm not a traitor!" Seeley snapped.

"No. Nor is anyone in our family, living and dead, other than that one man, not since Junius Brutus Booth left London and set his sons up to perform Shakespeare for illiterate miners."

"That sounds really boring."

Hank playfully tousled Seeley's hair. "They were the greatest acting family of their day. The one I like is Junius' son Edwin."

Seeley let the grilled cheese fall from his hand back to the plate. He had never thought about why his grandfather had named his father Edwin. He had limited himself to wondering why he'd gotten a ridiculous name like _Seeley_ while his younger brother had gotten the completely normal _Jared_.

"As I was saying," Hank continued, content that he had Seeley's attention, "The Booths were great actors but Edwin was the greatest. He founded an actors' club in New York that's lasted a hundred years so far. They say he played Hamlet better than anyone else. There's a statue of him in Manhattan and a fountain dedicated to him in front of a courthouse in Maryland. He's the reason there's a Booth Theatre on Broadway."

Seeley considered that. He didn't like plays, and musicals were worse. "Still sounds boring," he informed Hank.

"In 1864," Hank went on, "Edwin was on a train platform in New Jersey. Tell me, Seeley, why does New Jersey exist?"

"To keep the crap in the Atlantic Ocean off of Pennsylvania," Seeley answered eagerly. Every science teacher in Pennsylvania taught his students that much.

Hank grinned. "Correct. Naturally, it was crowded because people wanted to get the hell out of New Jersey. One of the people on the platform was Abraham Lincoln's son Robert. The crowd was pushing and shoving and Robert fell off the platform. Just as he thought he was going to go under the wheels of the train, someone pulled him to safety. He looked at the man and saw that it was the most famous actor of the day- Edwin Booth."

Seeley shook his head. "That's too much of a coincidence."

"Truth is stranger than fiction. Edwin didn't know until later who he'd saved. It comforted him when his brother John Wilkes assassinated President Lincoln."

Seeley shrugged. Jared screwed up sometimes, but Seeley was pretty sure that he didn't have to worry about Jared assassinating President Reagan.

"You said that it wasn't our fault that we're related to John Wilkes Booth. You're right. What one person in a family does reflects on his family, but it doesn't make everyone else the same. Do not ever be reckless or rash with a gun, Shrimp."

"I won't," said Seeley.

He wondered again whether he would have followed through if he had gotten the box open. He hadn't wanted to die at precisely that second, after all. He had just wanted to be prepared for his father's return.

Then Hank asked whether he thought the Sixers had been right to draft Charles Barkley, and Seeley's mind was elsewhere for the rest of the night. He almost forgot that he'd been promised a surprise the next morning.

* * *

"Put on your jeans," Hank instructed Seeley and Jared, and they complied with little argument even though it was too hot to wear anything other than shorts.

They did, however, object when they saw their winter jackets in the back of the car.

"Maybe Pops has heatstroke and it made him stupid?" Jared theorized.

It seemed as likely as anything to Seeley as they drove to a college several towns away.

"I know you said you wanted me to go to college, but aren't I a little young?" asked Seeley.

"It's never too early to start preparing," said Hank noncommittally. He swung the car down a hidden, tree-lined road.

It was Jared who caught sight of the sign first. "Blevins Rink," he read aloud, and it all made sense. The jackets. The promise that the surprise would be _cool_.

"We don't know how to skate, Pops," Seeley told Hank apologetically. There were plenty of places to play basketball and a few to play football or baseball, but the only rinks Seeley had seen in his life had been on television.

"But you love the Flyers. You don't want to learn?"

" _I_ do," said Jared eagerly.

"Good," said Hank. "Grab your coat. It'll be cold inside."

Even when they stepped inside, Seeley didn't put on his coat. After two weeks of a heat wave, it was nice to be a little bit cold. He had never felt air conditioning like this before. A few of his friends had heavy air conditioners hanging out of the window of one room of their houses, and that one small room would stay cool as long as it was shut up tight. The rink was huge and open and full of deliciously frozen ice.

The instructions flew at him thick and fast. The skates were to be one size smaller than his usual shoes. He was going to wear figure skates for his first lesson because they were more stable, but he could switch to hockey skates later. He was going to fall, everyone did, and when it happened he should fall to his side and land on his hip if he could manage it. To start, they would march onto the ice and gradually would start to glide without any effort at all. When he was ready to stroke, he needed to remember to push sideways with the inside of his blade rather than backwards with the outside.

He tried to remember everything while Jared and Hank were busy flirting with the girl who handed them their skates.

"My friend Joe arranged this special for me," Hank was saying. "I couldn't have afforded it otherwise. Every Sunday at church, I ask the good Lord why he didn't make me rich instead of so damn handsome."

The girl laughed.

"Really, Pops?" chimed in Jared. "I ask God the exact same thing."

The girl laughed harder and told Jared to lace his skates more tightly.

Seeley made a face at their refusal to take this seriously and stepped determinedly onto the ice. Hank's friend Joe skated hastily to his side and began to coach him. "Small steps at first. Don't fight it when you start to slide, but don't try to push it yet, either."

The instant that he felt himself gliding across the ice for the first time, Seeley knew that he was hooked.

Then he fell.

Then he got up.

 _ **To be continued, a decade or so later, in an undisclosed location…**_

* * *

 **Note:** _This was supposed to be one of those 5-and-1 oneshots, but once the first part hit 5000 words I thought it would be better as a 6-shot. So here we are despite my promise to swear off multichapter fics._

 _Special thanks to the person or people who were so thorough about the Booth family page on Wikipedia. :)_


	2. An Undisclosed Location

**Spoilers** : _For the whole fic, through season 10. This chapter through season 5 or so._

 **Disclaimer** : _I don't own Bones._

* * *

 _2\. An Undisclosed Location_

The heat in a desert was supposed to be a dry heat, but that rule didn't hold inside a windowless, airless room that stunk of sweat and blood and fear.

At least, Booth was almost certain that the room was windowless. His eyes were usually covered by a blindfold or a hood or both. When the hood was removed, a gun to his head quickly followed. A disembodied voice invariably informed him that this time, there was no bluff; this time, he was to be executed.

He never doubted it.

He had resigned himself to his death when the surviving members of his team- Booth and Eckhart and Alex- had been captured. That wasn't to say that he wouldn't attempt escape if the opportunity presented itself, but his captors hadn't made any mistakes.

More importantly, Booth could no longer walk. They had beaten every inch of his body, but they had focused most intently on his feet. It was only practical; they didn't want their prisoner to flee.

Once in a while he tried to discern whether his captors knew that he had a particular value to the United States Army beyond what was clear on his uniform. He inevitably decided that they must not. He told himself that as a sniper, he was the hand, not the brain. He never chose his own targets. But to the families and comrades of the people he shot, this was a distinction without a difference. He said _sniper_. They said _assassin_.

He would not, of course, be the first assassin in the family.

He knew better than to let his mind go too far down that path. His captors might kill them, but they wouldn't break him, and he certainly wouldn't do them the favor of breaking himself. He couldn't do anything about the physical aspect of things. There was no way to stop the electric shocks or the blows from the plastic pipes. But his mind was his own.

 _Hail Mary, full of grace.  
Our Lord is with thee._

Prayers were the easiest way to bring himself back to sentience when he'd been asleep or unconscious.

 _Blessed art thou among women,  
And blessed is the fruit of thy womb,  
Jesus._

He didn't know whether the rest of his team was nearby, but he knew that God was nearby.

 _Holy Mary, Mother of God,  
Pray for us sinners  
Now and at the hour of our death.  
Amen._

Every time he prayed, he remembered that somewhere in the world, someone else was saying those same words. It was soothing. He was never alone.

 _Our Father, Who art in heaven  
Hallowed be thy name_

Somewhere in time, his ancestors had said those same words more times than they or he could count. No doubt some of them had said the words as they died. If this was the end for him, he could do worse than to do the same.

 _Thy kingdom come,  
Thy will be done  
On earth as it is in heaven._

Somewhere at sea, on a ship belonging to the United States Navy, Jared had said those words within the last day. Jared might have been rebellious enough to join the navy instead of the army, but there was no way that he had ignored this part of their upbringing.

Booth was glad that Jared was safe on a ship with the full force of the navy behind him. Someone had to look out for Jared when he couldn't.

 _Give us this day our daily bread  
And forgive us our tresspasses  
As we forgive those who trespass against us._

Somewhere in Pennsylvania, Pops had said those words, too.

The Saint Christopher medal still lay against his chest. Booth didn't know why his captors hadn't taken it.

He was glad, too, that Pops was safe at home. He hoped that the army hadn't called yet to report that Sergeant Seeley Booth had misplaced himself and might not be returning. Pops didn't deserve worry or grief.

 _And lead us not into temptation  
But deliver us from evil.  
Amen._

When his brain was up to it, he switched from prayers to memories. He recalled as much of Ranger School as he could to remind himself that his body had met challenges before and could certainly survive whatever his current hosts decided to throw at it.

 _Ranger Physical Fitness Test requiring 49 push-ups in two minutes; 59 sit-ups in two minutes; and 6 chin-ups from a dead hang._

 _Five mile run in forty minutes or less._

 _Combat Water Survival Test_

 _Combat Water Survival Assessment_

 _Land Navigation Test_

 _Malvesti Field Obstacle Course_

 _Twelve Mile Tactical Ruck March_

Then came mountain training with its extra helpings of sleep deprivation, starvation, and frostbite.

Booth had never doubted his ability to make it through Ranger School. His father had inadvertently started preparing him when he hadn't been much more than a baby.

But no amount of beatings at his father's hands or carefully controlled abuse at Ranger School had been anything like this.

For a second, his mind lingered on the pain. The broken nose. The throbbing wrist.

He redirected his thoughts again.

Prayer reminded him of God and his family.

Ranger School reminded him of his duty to his country and the preparation he had undertaken for this situation.

And running through the names of all of the girls and women he had kissed was just _fun_.

Vanessa Taylor, in eighth grade, had made out with him under the bleachers. She'd been more experienced than he had, but he'd been just as good as smoking as she was. The kisses had tasted of tobacco and strawberry lip gloss, and it had been wonderful.

Kimberly Kerena had been later that year. She'd been shyer than Vanessa, and more awkward, too, and there was something charming about being the one to teach her. Like he was the hero, rescuing her from a lifetime of never having been kissed.

Carrie Rosaleen had lasted all summer. She was the one who had prompted Pops to break out The Talk and a package of condoms. It was two years before he needed any of that, which was much better than getting it two years too late.

He'd kissed Janine Aerony on a dare at a party just after he'd started high school. They'd never kissed again, but sometimes they'd studied together.

Renata Smith. Mistletoe. And then a few dates before she'd left for a new school in a haze of mystery. There'd been something about her he'd always wished he could save.

Chloe Kathleen. Another party, one where they'd played Seven Minutes in Heaven. It had been heavenly, all right.

Cindy Brunilda had lasted almost a year. She'd finally given him a reason to use those condoms.

Then Stacy Arin, who had worked with him at the local burger joint.

He'd brought his sleeping bag (he was, after all, a gentleman) and spread it out under the bleachers for Karen Eisley. She'd taken in clothes and run off before they'd actually had sex, but she'd still kissed him, so she was still on the list.

Right. Karen had run off because he'd been under the bleachers with Chloe the week before.

He'd taken Sharay Bellapini to the junior prom, and girls always put out after proms.

Laurel Lavone had been his senior prom date.

He'd wound up on the floor of Simonetta Vera's dorm room on his very first night at college.

But it was Simonetta's roommate, Camille Saroyan (" _Don't call me Camille, Seeley!_ " her voice echoed in his head) who had ended up being the closest thing he'd had to a college sweetheart. He'd even brought her home to meet his family. Unfortunately, that had resulted in Cam being present the day he took the blame for a little fender bender that had, strictly speaking, been Jared's doing. When he'd covered up for Jared's underage drinking a few weeks later, he'd nearly put his scholarship in jeopardy and Cam had become convinced that there was a pattern at work. She'd told him that Jared was a selfish little bastard, and he hadn't spoken to her for six months.

And he'd made out with both Azzura _and_ Isabel Ericson, and after that he was never going to get involved with sisters again. When he got married, it was going to be to an only child or to a woman who just had a brother.

Ksenia Noreen had been visiting a friend for graduation, and they'd had a very nice private graduation party.

Nora Anderson had wanted to make it work even after he'd enlisted, and they'd really tried, but the stress and the distance had been too much.

Then there had been Sarah Chelo. Two dates, no sex, one kiss.

First kisses were coming more slowly as he got older. It was harder to make that kind of connection while he was busy trying to kill people.

Or busy being tortured himself.

 _Hail Mary, full of grace.  
Our Lord is with thee._

* * *

When he was roused from a feverish semi-consciousness by the unmistakeable sound of gunfire, he thought, for the umpteenth time since his capture, that his life had come to an end. He was at peace. He had served his country. He had been a good grandson. He had seen Jared through to adulthood.

But when he heard the door burst open and felt the slight movement of air around his body, the voices that followed spoke unaccented English- at least, unaccented but for a Texan drawl.

The hands that reached for his blindfold were matter-of-fact and friendly. "You're American? You're Seeley Booth?"

He managed a weak, dry grunt of confirmation in response.

" _We've got him!"_ the Texan shouted to the rest of his team. " _We've got Booth!"_

He'd understood, of course, that there would be a rescue attempt. Understanding that was different from coming face to face with a team of men he didn't know but who seemed to know him. Their kindness made him want to cry in a way that days of beatings had not.

Rangers did not burst into tears.

Not when he was assisted to a sitting position and helped to drink water that was actually clean.

Not when the medic ran in and started cataloging his injuries with a reassuring stream of _they'll be able to fix that._

Not even when one of the strangers addressed him as "Seeley" and the other corrected that no one called him by his given name, because suddenly niceties like that mattered when a moment before no one had cared whether he was starving or dehydrated or bleeding out.

"Eckhart and Alex?" he asked when he'd saved up enough energy to get the words out.

"Got them both yesterday," the Texan promised. "You were the last, Sergeant."

" _Can he walk?"_ The question, posed in yet another new but American voice, came from somewhere outside the dark room that he was just barely beginning to be able to see properly.

"Yes," Booth said, even though he knew that it wasn't true. Rangers didn't let themselves get carried out. _Booths_ didn't let themselves get carried out.

"No," the medic corrected. "I'm not letting you do anything to make your feet worse. Your back's fucked up too- cracked vertebrae. Sorry, Sergeant. It's a stretcher and a chopper for you."

They did everything they could to make the stretcher seem less like a humiliation, and he did almost forget it once they stepped into the open air. He'd gotten used to the stale stench of the room after so many days of nothing else.

Had it only been days? Weeks? Surely not a month?

"How long?" Booth asked.

"Six days, fifteen hours," the Texan told him.

It seemed both longer and shorter. Time made no sense.

* * *

The passage of time continued to fluctuate. He was acutely aware of the long moments when his commanding officer saw him and wept unashamedly at the sight. He was less aware of the flight to Germany, and the first round of surgery. The debriefing was minimal; in its place was a constant cycle of medication and instructions to go back to sleep. He had an assigned babysitter who made sure that he got anything he asked for and was otherwise undisturbed.

There was, however, one phone call somewhere between the first round of surgery and the seemingly endless flight back to the United States.

"Your grandfather," the babysitter informed him. "They told him when they first brought you in that you were all right, and I've told him that the morphine is going to make you sound a little bit different-"

Booth heard the tone, if not the words, of Hank's voice from thousands of miles away. He heard the message, and the babysitter did too: _Stop explaining things and let me talk to my grandson._

Booth chuckled.

Somehow, the chuckle hurt even through the morphine that was blocking out the cracked vertebrae and the broken wrist and the bruises and whatever had happened to his feet, if he still had feet. It was funny, too, to think about whether or not he still had feet. It made him feel like a cartoon character, who could purchase a new set of feet from Acme or who could regrow feet in no time flat.

But it wasn't the time for cartoons, not when he needed to say something to reassure Hank.

"Hey, Pops," he said when he managed to hold the phone to his ear using his less battered hand. "Don't yell at the babysitter. He's just doing his job."

" _Oh, Shrimp."_ There was the odd delay that came with a telephone connection traversing four thousand miles. " _It's good to hear your voice."_

"Yours, too, Pops," he lied. In reality, the naked fear in Hank's voice wasn't mitigated by the miles or the tinny connection. It harshed the buzz Booth was getting from the painkillers. "I wish they hadn't told you. They didn't need to worry you. I'm fine."

" _Don't be stupid, Seeley."_ The reprimand was sharp and rather uncalled-for. After all, he'd been held captive, starved, beaten, and tortured for a week. That should have earned him a moratorium on being called names for at least a month. He was silent for long enough that Hank noticed, which made him feel even worse. " _I'm sorry. You know I'm not good at the mushy stuff. I'll do better when I see you in person."_

"No!" Booth snapped frantically. He couldn't think quickly enough to tell Hank why he shouldn't come. "You can't interrupt your life like that. I'm fine."

" _There's nothing in my life more important than my grandson."_

" _What about that woman?"_ Booth teased. "Your girlfriend?"

He didn't actually know for a fact that Hank had someone in his life at the moment, but it was a safe bet. Hank had mourned the loss of his wife, but he had not lacked for female companionship once a respectable amount of time had passed.

" _Jared told you about her?"_ asked Hank, and Booth knew he had guessed correctly. " _She has grandchildren too. She understands. I'll be there waiting when they get you to Walter Reed."_

" _If you come, I'll tell them not to let you in! I'll run away, I won't be there!"_ Booth shouted for the first time since his capture, and shock jolted through his body. He couldn't let his grandfather see him bruised and beaten, thirty pounds underweight, confined to a wheelchair if not a hospital bed. His appearance had reduced hardened war veterans to tears when his rescuers had first dragged him back to the base. How much worse would it be for his own grandfather to see him like this?

" _If that's what you want, Shrimp,"_ Hank agreed. " _I won't visit you until you invite me. But I love you. I'm allowed to say I love you?"_

"I love you too," said Booth, and he hung up the phone and asked for more morphine, which was promptly provided.

* * *

As promised, Hank had not parked himself at Walter Reed Army Medical Center to await Booth's arrival.

But that didn't mean that Booth was left the hell alone to contemplate his future as a cripple in peace. That would have been too easy.

He'd barely been settled into his new room when Camille Saroyan appeared. He hadn't seen her in over a year. She was as pretty as he'd remembered. She also looked sick to her stomach; it was hard to miss the gray tinge that her skin took on on the rare occasions that she was upset or frightened. He still looked terrible, then.

Even through his jetlagged, pain-filled, heavily medicated haze, Booth knew that Hank had sent her. She'd been able to talk her way past his keeper by claiming to be a doctor in the employ of the government. Of course, she _was_ a doctor in the employ of the government, but that was beside the point.

"I know I look bad, but I do not need a coroner, Camille," he said when their eyes met.

"Don't call me Camille, Seeley," she retorted, and at least that was normal. "Your grandfather asked me to come."

"No kidding."

Cam let that slide for the moment. "How are you feeling?"

He was torn between a cheery lie about how he was feeling better all the time and a profanity-laden torrent of honesty. "About like I look," he said at last.

"Is there anything that you need that you aren't getting?"

"No," he said, and this time he didn't have to consider lying. "Everyone has been great."

"Would you give them permission to let me look at your medical records?"

He eyed her warily. "If I do, will you call my grandfather and tell him that he doesn't need to worry and everything's okay?"

"If that's true, yes I will," she agreed.

There was a sinking fear in the pit of his stomach. "You think it might not be true?"

"All I know is that you were captured and you look like shit. If your doctors told you that everything is going to be fine, everything is going to be fine."

"Y _ou look like shit_ ," Booth mimicked. "Your bedside manner hasn't improved."

"The corpses don't care," Cam retorted. Then she softened and her eyes brightened. "I'm very glad that you aren't a corpse, Seeley."

"Don't call me Seeley, Camille."

She smiled slightly. "Let me get your doctor or… someone. Let me look at your file. Then you and I will talk, and then Hank and I will talk, and then maybe Jarhead and I will talk if I can get through to him."

"He's in the Navy, not the Marines," Booth muttered. He'd avoided speaking to Cam for six months because she'd tried to insert herself into his relationship with Jared, but Jared didn't care. Jared still let her call him by that stupid nickname that wasn't even that clever. "You get away with shit because you're beautiful," he told Cam.

"Yes," said Cam. "I do."

"What does your boyfriend think of you running down here from New York because your ex's family called?" he wondered.

"You're not my ex-friend," Cam returned. "And I would suddenly find Andrew a lot less attractive if he got jealous because I needed to check on an actual war hero."

Booth squirmed. "Not a hero. Don't say that again." Cam looked like she might argue, so he rushed on to a new subject. "Andrew has a kid, right? How's that going?"

Her face lit up, and he could see that for the first time no part of her was dwelling on how battered he looked. "Let me get a picture."

She produced the photograph from her purse and offered it to him. The toddler looked much like other toddlers Booth had known. Cute.

Kids were cute until they were screaming, covered in their father's blood, because a sniper had used the occasion of a child's birthday party to finish a job.

The children of the world might be better off if Booth never walked again.

He could hardly say that to Cam as he stared at the photograph of the girl who, it seemed, was destined to become her daughter. "You're carrying around her picture? I thought you didn't even want kids."

"I don't want kids. I want _this_ kid. Michelle. She's perfect. She's so smart. You should see how she's learning new things every minute of every day."

"I'm glad you're happy."

"I'll be even happier once I'm sure you're on the road to recovery."

He slowed his morphine drip to nothing as she engrossed herself in his files. He didn't want his head to be clouded for this conversation.

"I don't see a note about the surgery you had on your shoulder in college," said Cam. "I'll make sure they know."

"Can't we all just forget that that happened?" He probably wouldn't have been good enough to play professional basketball in any case, but it stung that his collegiate career had been ended by his body and not by a lack of will or skill.

"No," said Cam. "We can't, because it's part of your medical history." She dug into her purse again and produced a folded piece of paper and a pen. "Here. Fill out your bracket. March Madness starts tomorrow, and I'm sure there's a pool somewhere around here."

It was the most interesting suggestion he'd heard since his rescue. It definitely beat debriefings and psych evaluations and surgeries and admonishments to call his family. He had no idea which teams had played well this year, but that was part of the beauty of March Madness. Half the time, the outcome made no sense. Picking the games based on which teams had the nicest uniforms was practically a valid strategy, not that that was the strategy Booth used personally. When in doubt, he picked based on who had the best nickname.

He set the bracket aside when Cam looked ready to talk. "They need to do further surgery on both of your feet," she said. "They told you that?"

"Yeah."

"Everything else is going perfectly."

"What's the worst case scenario?" he asked. He didn't really want to discuss it with Cam, but he had to know what she'd be telling Pops and Jared.

"The worst case scenario is very unlikely."

"So it's so bad that you can't answer the question?"

"Worst case scenario, you're in a wheelchair for the rest of your life," she said bluntly. She was right; she really had no bedside manner for anyone but dead bodies. Booth didn't dislike that about her. "That's a small chance. There's a much better chance of the best case scenario, which is that you recover completely and are able to do everything that you used to do. You'll have some lingering pain in your feet sometimes, but it'll be manageable."

"And you're going to tell Pops that?"

"Unless you'd like to invite him here and talk to him yourself, which you really should."

"Would you want your parents to see you while you looked like this?" he demanded.

"I wouldn't have a choice. They'd storm the place."

He tried to make a face, and flinched when he did. His reset broken nose still hurt. "The answer is no, you wouldn't. Don't interfere with my family, Cam."

"I won't do anything that you don't want me to do."

"Good." He paused, and then conceded defeat. "I'll ask him to come once the swelling in my face goes down and I gain back the rest of the weight I lost."

"Good." Her face fell as she stared at the file. She really would have been a terrible physician for live patients. "You're thirty pounds underweight."

"They didn't feed me and they barely gave me any water."

"What else did they do?" Her voice was hushed.

"Nothing that we're going to talk about. If you want to stay, we can talk about your job or your boyfriend or the kid or college basketball. But we're not talking about my family and we're not talking about how I got here."

Cam agreed quickly, and they talked about her job and her boyfriend and her kid and college basketball.

* * *

Booth spent the next few days willing himself to stop looking like the demented love child of Freddy Krueger and the Elephant Man.

 _Fits, doesn't it?_ He wondered to himself. _You_ _ **are**_ _Freddy Krueger to the kid whose father you killed at the birthday party. And to all the other kids you didn't see when you killed their parents._

When he'd been blindfolded and tied down in the room on the other side of the world, he had distracted his mind with prayers and memories and recitations. Now that he had resources that weren't in his own head, he distracted himself by watching basketball. Cam had been right; there was a massive betting pool that stretched from end to end of the hospital. Every time one of his teams won, just for a moment, he was free of pain and worry and guilt. Just for a moment, he forgot that, like his shoulder had taken his ability to play college basketball, his feet might now take his ability to do everything else. He might have already skated for the last time. He might have already _walked_ for the last time.

The day after his second surgery, an orderly (his own private babysitter having returned to his actual assignment) came into Booth's room and began punching buttons on the phone without ceremony.

There was something Booth mistrusted about those phones with their dozens of buttons and multiple lines. He missed rotary telephones. He was going to miss the twentieth century, assuming that he managed to outlive it.

"Lieutenant Booth?" the orderly asked the phone. "Good." At last, he turned to Booth. "Your brother," he explained needlessly. "It's the first good connection we've made to his ship. We've been trying since they got you out of there."

Booth grunted and accepted the phone. "Hey, Jared."

There was a pause. Again, the odd delay that came from talking to someone on the other side of the world. " _Hi, Seeley."_

"Where are you?"

" _The Indian Ocean,"_ said Jared, and Booth supposed that that narrowed things down enough.

"Are you safe?"

" _I'm supposed to ask you that."_

That pissed Booth off more than was strictly reasonable, but he didn't care about strictly reasonable. "I'm your big brother, and I'm asking you."

" _I'm fine."_ That was what Booth always said when he wasn't fine.

"Are you-"

" _Say my prayers every night and eat all my vegetables,"_ said Jared with a certain sarcasm that Booth didn't appreciate. " _They said you had surgery yesterday? Did that go okay?"_

"Fine," said Booth. "And I look less like Seth from _The Fly_ today. I can probably let Pops come see me without giving him a heart attack now. Hey, what's the deal with his new girlfriend?"

" _You know Pops and the ladies,"_ said Jared. " _The real question is, are there any pretty nurses taking care of you?"_

"Were you not listening? Seth from _The Fly_."

" _You have the wounded war hero thing going. Use it."_

"That's gross."

" _You've got it. Use it,"_ Jared repeated, and Booth was glad that he was the older brother and therefore didn't have to listen to Jared. " _I'm stuck on this ship for two more months. Do it for the family name."_

"Shut up," said Booth eloquently.

" _I'm glad you're all right,"_ said Jared. " _It scared the hell out of me when they called me in and said it was about you. I love you."_

"I love you, too." Fuck it, he did.

* * *

Hank arrived less than an hour after Booth called him.

"It wasn't a summons, Pops," Booth told him.

"Shut up, Seeley," said Hank eloquently. "Let me look at you."

Booth was glad that he'd put this off until his face was only slightly bruised and his weight was almost normal. Even better, he was allowed to sit up in a wheelchair and everyone seemed to be in agreement that there would be no lasting damage to his mobility as long as he rested his feet properly.

Hank's eyes raked over him carefully. There were no tears; there was no sick expression on his face. There was only a glowing affection that made Booth squirm in his chair.

"You'll come home with me as soon as you're ready," Hank declared.

"You don't need me cramping your style," said Booth with a half-smile.

"We'll have style together. I miss having you and your brother home."

"You did your job," Booth objected. "It wasn't even your job, it was Dad's. You need-"

"You need to stop acting like I'm a doddering old man who needs you to protect him from the world." With that, Hank gave Booth's wheelchair a shove and Booth was powerless to do anything about it.

"Where are we going?" he demanded.

"They're watching the game in the lounge around the corner. You've got Syracuse, right?"

"Right," Booth was forced to agree. It had been an inspired choice, although one he'd admittedly borrowed from Cam. He was one of a handful of people still in contention to win the pool because of Syracuse.

The lounge was crowded with patients, visitors, and even staff on breaks; the shouts of delight and disgust echoed down the hall. Booth let himself get lost in the sensation of watching a game with his grandfather. The normalcy of it all soothed the frantic energy that had been crawling beneath his skin.

When Hank left with promises to come visit again soon, Booth, enjoying the lingering feeling of relaxation, rolled himself through the crowded hall and amused himself by watching the visitors go about their business. A blonde woman in particular turned out to be worth watching: he could see that she was smart and driven and focused on whatever had brought her here.

Her knot of people happened to drift toward him, and he slipped into small talk with them about how very hard the staff at Walter Reed worked.

"What's your name?" he finally asked the pretty blonde. He flashed the trademark Booth grin, because Hank and Jared did not have a monopoly on that.

"Rebecca," she told him, and she smiled back.

 _ **To be continued, a few years later, in Washington DC...**_


	3. Washington DC

_**3\. Washington DC**_

Booth was a little bit late leaving work, as usual.

He took pride in his work. He wouldn't let his country or his family down.

He loved his work. He was good at it, and that felt good.

He obsessed over his work. He was finally in a position to save lives instead of take them. If he caught a killer, it wouldn't matter to the little boy halfway around the world who'd been left screaming in his father's blood, but it would matter to someone else.

He wasn't surprised when his phone rang; he knew that he would see Rebecca's familiar number before he flipped the phone open and pulled up the tiny antenna. (Cell phones were useful; there was no denying that. He was willing to adopt any new technology that helped him make the world a safer place for the people he loved. But he missed rotary phones. He just did.)

"Hey, baby," he greeted her. "I'm leaving now. Have a drink at the bar and I'll see you in fifteen minutes."

There was a sharper intake of breath than he thought was strictly warranted. Rebecca wasn't the type to panic because he was late for their standard Friday night dinner. She had been his number one cheerleader as he'd transitioned from the army to the FBI. She had her own career and she took that seriously, as well.

"Are you all right?" he asked. He registered a hint of panic and promptly set it aside. He acknowledged panic but he didn't let it stop him from taking action. Most likely action wasn't even needed. Rebecca had admitted to feeling a bit odd earlier in the week. Perhaps she had simply caught a summer cold. There was no real danger, even if there was something unfair about getting sick in the summer.

"Would you mind terribly if we had dinner at my place instead of out?" she asked. It didn't escape him that she had ignored his question.

" _Are you all right?"_ he asked, more loudly this time.

"I'm fine, Seeley. I just… feel like cooking for you, is all."

That was a lie. He was sure of it. Rebecca didn't dislike cooking and certainly wasn't a bad cook, but she never "felt like cooking for him." She had a host of other ways of showing her affection, and he appreciated every one of them.

He pushed down his instinct to pull out his siren as he drove to Rebecca's place. He spent as much time at her apartment as he spent at his own, but they hadn't moved in together. He wasn't against the idea, really, but he also didn't feel a particular need to move their relationship along more quickly. Everything was good just as it was.

Of course, the little matter of Hank's disapproval niggled at the back of his mind. Pops had been kind and pleasant to Rebecca, but he hadn't taken to her the way he had taken to some of Booth's other girlfriends.

Booth shrugged mentally. None of that mattered. He was a grown man who did not need his grandfather to approve of his girlfriend. He hadn't even needed Hank to approve of Vanessa Taylor when he'd been in eighth grade.

Hank had _totally_ approved of Vanessa Taylor.

In retrospect, Hank had probably just been happy to see his grandson behaving normally in the aftermath of being abandoned by the father who treated him like shit. But that was behind Booth. He didn't mention it. He didn't think about it. He only thought about his life in the moment- the FBI and his beautiful girlfriend.

"Rebecca?" he called as he unlocked the door and looked around. "Oh."

She had cooked, all right, but more noticeably she had dimmed the lights and lit candles. There was music playing softly in the background.

So she wasn't sick.

His next theory was that she might want to break up with him. Some people did it that way: they made everything as romantic as possible in a futile attempt to celebrate the relationship and soften the blow of the end.

"Sit," she directed, and he sat.

"Are you going to tell me what this is about?" he asked. She wasn't usually one to beat around the bush.

"I have some news," she said.

"Good news? Bad news?"

"Surprising news." She fixed him with a long look and nodded. "Great news once you get over the shock. I think you'll feel that way. I felt that way. But it was… it was a surprise."

A thrill of fear clenched at his gut. He took note of it and sent it away.

He knew, now, that there was only one thing that she could be building toward, and he had only a few seconds to prepare himself to react like the man he wanted to be. The man he _was_ , damn it.

"We've been careful, but not always that careful," Rebecca was saying. "So I took a pregnancy test and I went to the doctor to make sure it wasn't a false positive. You're going to be a father, Seeley."

He forced his face to light with a smile.

Then he realized that the smile was genuine.

He was ready for a baby.

He was ready for a family.

He was ready to share a true partnership with Rebecca. No more separate apartments. No more separate lives.

He was ready to start right that minute.

He took her hand; it felt just right in his own. She looked more beautiful than ever as the candlelight glowed around them.

Without letting go of her hand, he slid out of his seat and knelt beside her. This was fast, this was spontaneous, but he was used to thinking quickly and he knew that he was right. "Rebecca Stinson, will you marry me?" he asked.

Her eyes filled with tears.

The moment was perfect right up until she said no.

The dinner never did get eaten, and it was a miracle that the candles weren't knocked over and the room set on fire during the argument that ensued.

Eventually, Rebecca suggested in no uncertain terms that he leave. "Go home, Seeley," she growled.

She could tell him to leave but she couldn't tell him to go home. He didn't want to see the inside of his apartment that was meant for someone in a transitional phase of his life, not someone with a child. Someone with a child was supposed to have a house in Maryland or Virginia where he lived with his wife.

Instead, he drove three hours to Atlantic City and spent the night switching from three card poker to blackjack to slots to Texas hold'em. By the time the sun started to rise, he'd lost almost $2500, which was just about the amount he should have been out spending on an engagement ring.

" _Seeley, you would never have proposed to me if I weren't pregnant."_

" _That isn't true."_

" _You don't even have a ring!"_

Fine. Fuck it. The next time he proposed to a woman, he would have a ring. Even if he couldn't afford it. Even if it was non-returnable. Even if he knew for a fact that the woman would probably say no.

He ate enough breakfast to sober himself up before he got back in the car. Still, he wasn't quite sure how he came to be parked in front of his grandfather's house. All of a sudden, he was just there.

Hank opened the front door before Booth could change his mind and drive away.

"Seeley? Are you all right?"

 _Are you all right?_ Thirteen, fourteen hours before he had asked Rebecca that very question. She'd been his girlfriend then. He didn't think that she was anymore. In the meantime, he'd gained and lost a child, a family, a marriage, a life. Not to mention a lot of cash. He knew that he was sometimes reckless with his gambling, but $2500 in one night was bad even for him.

"Yeah, Pops. Great." He pulled himself together. He could always pull himself together. He'd survived his father and he'd survived a war and he could survive this, too.

"You look like you've been up all night, and you smell like a bar," said Hank. It wasn't quite a criticism, but it was the next thing to it.

"I was celebrating," lied Booth. "Good news. That's why I had to come and tell you in person." It sounded true when he said it. Maybe it _was_ true.

"Then come inside and tell me."

The house never changed. His grandparents had lived there forever, and even though his grandmother was gone now, their shared life still permeated every inch of the house. Children and grandchildren. Life and death. School and work. Newspapers and television. Guns and grilled cheese sandwiches.

It was how a house was supposed to be.

It was how his house with Rebecca should have been, before she'd decided that Booth's son- his gut told him the baby was a boy and he trusted his gut- would be raised by whatever man she met next while Booth saw him every other weekend if he was lucky.

" _I'll be a good father, Rebecca," he pleaded._

" _I don't doubt that, Seeley," she said, crying harder, and he didn't believe her._

"Sit," said Hank, the way Rebecca had told him to sit. He was tired of being told to sit.

"You should sit," Booth corrected. "You're the one getting the news."

Hank sat down with more theatricality than Booth thought was strictly necessary. He remembered having a conversation fifteen years before in this very room, at this very table, about their family's history of acting.

His son should have had the chance to learn about the family history in a family home.

" _Go home, Seeley," Rebecca growled._

"Well?" asked Hank.

"You're going to be a great-grandfather," said Booth, and again the fake smile became a real one as soon as he smiled it. He loved the baby already.

"You and who? Rebecca?"

"Of course Rebecca! She's my girlfriend." _Probably. Sort of._

"You getting married?"

"No. She said no."

"Thank God one of you had that much sense."

"You think it's good sense for parents not to be married before the baby is born? There's a word for that."

Hank made a dismissive gesture. "Times are changing. This isn't ideal, but it's better than the two of you getting married because she's pregnant instead of because you've both decided that you want to spend your lives together. You can still be good parents." Hank reached for Booth's arm, and Booth froze. Hank didn't usually go in for the mushy stuff. "You're going to be a wonderful father, Seeley."

"When I'm not even there?" Booth asked, not even caring how bitter he sounded. "At least I had a good role model for abandoning my kid. I know exactly how to do it." Despite the warm kitchen, something like a shiver ran through him. "Do you think that's why Rebecca won't marry me? She doesn't know everything about our family, but she knows some."

"Did Rebecca tell you why she said no?"

"She said that that wasn't where our relationship was headed without a baby and we shouldn't change because of the baby."

"I told you. Good sense. Believe her when she says that's her reason. I'll say this for you, Seeley. You always go for intelligent women even when they're the wrong ones. Your grandmother would have been proud. She was proud."

"She wouldn't have been able to show her face at church when her first great-grandchild was born out of wedlock."

"You think this is the first time this has happened at our church? Even if it weren't, do you think your grandmother would have hung her head or hidden because of what someone else thought?"

"No," he admitted.

"No," Hank confirmed. "I wish she were here for this because she would have been so happy for you. She knew what a wonderful father you would be. Knew it when you were thirteen years old and none of us could convince you that raising Jared wasn't your responsibility."

If Booth hadn't been clinging so desperately to Hank's words, he would have rolled his eyes. He had heard more than enough about how he wasn't Jared's father over the years. He mostly heard it from Jared himself- until Jared wanted something.

"I raised Edwin and I raised you, Seeley. You weren't the kind of boy that he was and you aren't the kind of young man that he was. You won't be the kind of father he was."

Booth nodded. Hank had been right about a lot over the years. He had to be right about this. He just had to be.

* * *

Booth took time to shower, change, and buy a dozen roses before he returned to Rebecca's apartment. Rather than using his key, he rang the bell _(a lifetime of not sharing a home with his child ahead of him…)_ and stood in the hallway attempting to look contrite.

Rebecca opened the door right away and smiled when he wordlessly handed her the flowers.

"I'm sorry for yelling," he muttered.

"I'm sorry, too," she said. "I know it was a shock."

"I want to be part of this baby's life even if you won't marry me."

"And you will be," said Rebecca. "You're his father."

" _His_?" asked Booth, remembering his earlier gut feeling.

"I'm not far along enough for the doctor to tell. It's just… intuition?"

"I had the same feeling."

Their eyes met and it was happy and sad at the same time.

"Have you started thinking of names?" he asked.

"Too overwhelmed," she said. "You?"

One name had come to him, over and over, on the drive from Philadelphia back to Washington. "If we're right, and it's a boy," he began carefully, "how do you feel about calling him Parker?"

 _ **To be continued… six years later in Maryland**_

Author's Note: _I'm ignoring the episode that has Booth saying he was on active duty when Parker was born because that doesn't seem to mesh with how established he was at the FBI when the show began; because the portrayal of the way the military handles births was none too accurate; and because backdoor pilots suck. So there. Three reasons, not that you asked. :)_


	4. Maryland

_4\. Maryland (The Killer in the Concrete)_

When he and Bones first arrived in Baltimore to examine a body of questionable origin, Booth thought that his biggest problem would be the sharp pain in his tooth. He had hoped that it was just a passing ache and that he would be able to avoid a trip to the dentist, but no such luck.

"Are you afraid of the dentist?" Bones asked when he winced in pain for the tenth time in as many minutes. Bones was always telling him that he was afraid when really he just didn't like something- clowns, dentists, clown dentists. He flinched again at the thought of a clown dentist, and decided that he could put off making an appointment for one more day.

The next problem, not counting Bones' insistence that they ship an entire block of concrete to the Jeffersonian (he was used to her ridiculous demands after two years of partnership) arose when Bones quietly told him that she'd seen her fugitive father at her mother's grave. She had, of course, called the police. Bones wasn't the easy going, forgiving type who liked to hear people out when their behavior wasn't up to her standards.

"Did you talk to your dad at all before you called the cops?" he asked, although he suspected that he knew the answer already.

"No. Why would I?"

"Well, I mean, I haven't seen my dad in a long time and if I had the opportunity to talk–" He grabbed his face as if in sudden pain. "Ow, God."

"Go to a dentist," Bones scolded, predictably distracted from asking what, precisely, Booth might say to his inaccessible father.

 _Want to try to hit me now?_

 _Thanks for leaving. Best thing you ever did._

 _Why? Seriously, why? I've been to war. I've got a son. I understand a lot of things about a lot of people but one thing I don't get is how you could..._

Stupid stuff, really. There was no reason to say any of it. Edwin Booth couldn't have said anything to change the past or the future. Seeley Booth wasn't interested in anything that Edwin Booth might have to say.

If he had had the opportunity to talk to his dad, he wouldn't take it. That was why he never bothered to use his position at the FBI to look into the man's whereabouts. He had no desire to relive anything about his life before Pops had stepped in.

But Bones didn't need to know that.

The irony wasn't entirely lost on him. He didn't want to think about the early years of his childhood because he didn't want to remember how much of an asshole his father had been. Bones claimed not to remember the early years of her childhood because she didn't want to admit that she had had an adoring father.

Booth was going to arrest Max Keenan at the first opportunity because that was his job, but it was not lost on him that Max looked at Bones with the love and reverence she deserved.

It was a shame that Bones wouldn't let herself see, but he was working on it, and if he had to give her a misleading picture of his own family situation to nudge her along, well, that was a good use of his time and energy.

He swallowed down the tiny twinge of guilt at the misleading statements he'd thrown her way over the past year.

" _Do you like your father?" she'd asked once._

" _I love my father," he'd told her, and she had been too caught up in her own mixed emotions to notice that he had technically avoided answering her question._

The one time that she had specifically asked him about his childhood- and that was a big step for Bones, who when they'd first partnered up had barely been willing to acknowledge that he was a human being- he'd skirted the issue just as easily. He'd mentioned the mother who wrote jingles and the father who was a barber in his post-military life. He hadn't mentioned that they'd both abandoned him or that if he was a functioning human being all credit went to his grandfather.

That wasn't a betrayal of Pops, who deserved credit for being a saint, or of Bones, who had so much difficulty extending trust to anyone about anything. It was simply withholding information that was only going to cloud her thinking on her own situation.

She was confused enough as it was, although she did seem to listen when they reviewed Max's rap sheet together and he pointed out that Max had never killed an innocent citizen or an honest cop.

But it didn't surprise him when he got a phone call from Bones that night. The sound was muffled, as if the phone was half-hidden, and Bones ignored his greeting. He was left to listen, and it took only a split second to register that Bones was not alone and that the man with her was Max.

Of all things that a wanted fugitive could be doing, Max was singing a 1970s country-rock ballad to his skeptical daughter.

" _...I've been thinkin' 'bout  
All the times you told me  
You're so full of doubt  
You just can't let it be, but I know  
If you keep comin' back for more  
Then I'll keep on tryin'  
I'll keep on tryin'..."_

Booth tried to picture Bones as he rushed to her apartment. In his mind's eye, she fought to pretend that she didn't remember and that she didn't care whether Max stayed or left. But she cared. Booth knew that she cared, and Max knew it, too.

Max stopped singing and apparently found Bones' notes on their current case. " _Hugh Kennedy. Bad guy,"_ Max expounded. " _But he's dead, about five years ago in a car crash in West Virginia."_

" _Recent evidence suggests otherwise. How do you know him?"_ asked Bones.

" _Well, him and his ice pick were pretty famous in some circles. I gotta go."_

" _Now?"_

" _Yeah. You speed dialed Booth. Now he's been listening to everything and the SWAT team's on its way."_

Booth couldn't decide whether to swear or chuckle. Max _was_ a criminal, and he _had_ abandoned Bones, but he was clever. Bones would slap Booth if he said it out loud, but he could see father and daughter reflected in one another.

" _I mean, I'm just guessing,"_ Max continued. " _There's something I do want to say to you."_

" _Mom_ ," said Bones bluntly.

" _It's not about mom. It's about you and it's about stuff that she wanted you to know. She never got the chance to tell you."_

Suddenly Max's voice was clearer, as if he had spoken directly into the phone for the first time. " _Hey, Booth. There's a couple of things that you should know about this guy Kennedy. He's got an addiction to model airplanes."_

Getting advice on a case from a wanted fugitive wasn't that strange, all things considered. The model airplane lead could be put to good use.

" _What's the second thing?"_ Bones asked

" _He's wily. You be careful, okay?"_

Bones sighed heavily into the phone. " _Did you get that?"_ she asked Booth.

He had.

* * *

The model airplane lead was good, all right. It was so good that Booth found himself punched in the head, separated from his gun, and duct taped into a rug by Hugh Kennedy. In the short term, it was actually an improvement as far as pain level went because Kennedy knocked out his tooth in the struggle.

In the long term, Booth now had problems that loomed larger than a visit to the dentist or facilitating the world's strangest father-daughter reunion.

He managed to roll himself off the bed, but he remained bound and gagged on the dirty hotel room floor for the next 18 hours with only the red light of the digital bedside clock to keep him company.

When he convinced himself that there would be no escaping his bonds, he resumed the old habits that had served him well as a POW.

 _Hail Mary, full of grace  
Our Lord is with thee…_

* * *

Kennedy had been pleasant for someone who had beaten Booth around his head and left him wrapped in a rug in a hotel room. _Settle down. Someone'll find you. You have a good day now,_ he'd said as he left

Unfortunately, the "someone" who found Booth turned out to be Melvin Gallagher with his attorney Clark Lightner in tow.

Gallagher had a hand in practically all the organized crime in West Virginia, ranging from prostitutes to extortion to drugs to gambling. If Booth cared to take the time to ponder it, and he didn't, he had probably patronized one of Gallagher's establishments during his gambling days. Gallagher was a crime boss through and through. There was no humor or kindness in his fat face. There was greed and violence.

Booth knew men like Gallagher.

The weasley little attorney, Lightner, might be worse. Bones had liked Lightner when they'd done an interrogation the day before- but only because Lightner knew the difference between cement and concrete.

Booth knew men like Lightner, too. He was just as bad as Gallagher, and the fact that Lightner played smart while Gallagher played dumb didn't change that.

It was Lightner who began the interrogation.

"Was it Hugh Kennedy that bundled you up in a carpet?"

Kennedy had shown Booth mercy, but Kennedy was still a criminal who had never paid for his crimes. Booth would have been on secure moral and ethical ground if he'd answered the question.

Answering still would have been an incredibly stupid thing to do. Lightner and Gallagher would kill him the moment he gave them what they wanted, and they might even manage to frame Kennedy for the job.

"I can't discuss ongoing investigations with civilians, all right, so just cut me out of here," he suggested as naturally as if he hadn't been bound in a rug for 18 hours."

Gallagher picked up the gun that Kennedy had thoughtfully left behind for Booth.

"Put that down!" Booth ordered.

Gallagher pistol whipped him.

It hurt less than the tooth had, really.

* * *

When Booth regained consciousness, he was tied to a chair in what, unless he missed his guess, was a hanger in an airfield. The beating that had begun in the hotel room continued.

He'd had worse as a POW.

He'd had worse at the hands of his _father_.

When the interrogation began again, he was more pissed off than frightened. He knew that the FBI was looking for him. So were Bones and her squad of obnoxious geniuses. He liked his odds. His only job was to hang on.

"Perhaps he didn't see Kennedy," Lightner began conversationally. Lightner was trying to play good cop, but he wasn't very good at it. Booth was a something of an expert on good cops, what with being one himself.

"Yeah? Now how'd you come to that though?" Gallagher pretended to wonder. The way the two thugs contorted the interrogation techniques that Booth himself used on a regular basis was downright pathetic.

"Well, Kennedy would've have left him with an ice pick protruding from his head," said Lightner.

"Just one simple question, big dog. Did you see Kennedy?" asked Gallagher for at least the fourteenth time.

Booth remained silent. Every minute of silence on his end was one more minute for the FBI to sweep the area or for Bones to find the clue that told her where he was. He really hoped that the FBI had left Bones in the loop. Communications between the FBI and the Jeffersonian were frequently terrible without the designated FBI liaison. Sometimes communications were terrible _with_ the designated FBI liaison, although that was hardly the fault of the handsome and talented man in question.

"We could get our own ice pick, make it look like Kennedy killed him," Lightner suggested, as if Booth hadn't known that that was their endgame hours ago.

"You know we can't let you live, right?" added Gallagher, as if Booth hadn't known _that_ from the first moment that he saw them.

"You've been struck and restrained. Technically, kidnapping a federal agent is as bad as murdering him these days," lamented Lightner. "How would you like to kill him?" he asked Gallagher.

"First I gotta know for sure if Kennedy's dead or alive," said Gallagher.

"Good luck with that one, big dog," Booth told him. Now he had two reasons to hold out. The first was that making his death long and painful instead of short and painful gave Bones and the FBI more time to get to him before his death became less of an abstract concept. The second was that Gallagher was fucking annoying.

"Big dog," mulled Gallagher. He was pissed, but Booth doubted that making Gallagher angry made him any more of a psycho. The man was almost certainly too experienced to be the type who made mistakes when he was angry, but it was worth trying.

"Oh, I suppose we could do that thing that McKenna used to do. But I'd need a blowtorch and a sharpened screwdriver," said Lightner as if he'd just thought of it.

"Just tell us," asked Gallagher.

"Woof," whispered Booth.

Lightner rifled through Booth's wallet and handed a photograph to Gallagher. Booth knew what the picture was; it was the only one he carried. It was, of course, of Parker.

"Oh, cute. Must be his kid, huh."

Booth remained silent and unmoving.

Gallagher punched him.

"Head like an anvil. I hurt my hand," whined Gallagher. He held up the picture of Parker, and even though Booth had known that this was coming he felt a rush of cold fury at the sight of Gallagher's fat fingers beside Parker's beautiful face. "Gonna let you take a look at your sweet boy. Consign his face into your memory and then I'm gonna ask you which one of your eyes you like best."

Gallagher made his first real mistake. He leaned in too close.

Booth headbutted Gallagher to the ground. If Gallagher really was going to kill him, he wasn't going to enjoy it.

While Gallagher rolled on the floor, the little weasel Lightner knocked over Booth's chair and began to kick Booth in the stomach.

It hurt more than anything Gallagher had done so far. Gallagher had been in control. Lightner was not, and Lightner, a bully at heart who didn't have the strength to back it up, delighted in the opportunity to kick someone stronger when that person was bound and didn't fight back.

 _What's the holdup, Bones?_ Booth thought into the universe.

And how had he reached the point that he expected Bones, not the FBI with its army of men and weapons and information, to be the one who came for him?

"Stop it, now," commanded Gallagher as he rolled to his knees and then climbed to his feet.

Lightner dusted himself off, almost looking abashed.

"Get the screwdriver and the blowtorch," said Gallagher, and Lightner did the closest thing to skipping Booth had ever seen a mobster's attorney do.

Meanwhile, the beating commenced in earnest.

Booth had known that Gallagher was holding back, but that didn't make it any more pleasant as the blows rained down on his head from every angle. There was no more affected whining about hurting his hand or jokes about big dogs; there was only systematic torture up until the point where Booth's eyes began to close of their own accord.

That, of course, was when Gallagher stopped so that the two of them could watch as Lightner used the blowtorch to heat the screwdriver.

"Did you see Kennedy?" Gallagher asked almost conversationally.

Booth was silent. He watched the blowtorch.

He was a gambling man- reformed, but still a gambling man. The odds were no longer in his favor. The odds said he would never see Parker again, and now the light of the blowtorch looked like the light of the candle that had lit Rebecca's face when she'd refused to marry him.

The stale smell of his bound, unwashed body brought him back to the small room in the desert where he'd spent a week having his feet broken in places he hadn't known existed.

And the heat of the screwdriver as it came closer and closer to his thigh was the heat of the August day when he'd been thirteen and Jared had complained about ice cream to their drunken father.

 _Was this how you saw me ending, Dad? What will you say when you hear? If you hear?_

 _No_ , he corrected himself. His last thoughts would not be about his father. They would be about the way Parker threw his arms open for a hug on Friday afternoon at the start of their weekends together.

The screwdriver seared through his suit pants and branded his leg. He squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again. The human body could take a lot, and he knew that better than most.

Lightner pulled back the screwdriver, and Booth breathed in a second's reprieve.

No.

It wouldn't just be a second, because the door had been flung open.

His rescue team had finally decided to show up.

He gathered himself and shoved his shoulder into Lightner. His chair tipped over, but Lightner and his screwdriver fell to the floor, too. Unless Booth missed his guess, Lightner had fallen on top of his precious screwdriver.

What could Booth say? He was a sniper. He had damn good aim.

Then Bones was hovering over him, casually suggesting to Lightner over her shoulder that if he lay still enough he might not die.

Max Keenan, wanted fugitive and savior of kidnapped FBI agents, burst into their little powwow.

"I need your car," Max told Bones.

"Max Keenan, you're under arrest," said Booth. He was lying on the floor while tied to a chair, but he figured that he would let all involved knew where he stood (metaphorically speaking) anyway.

"Not if I get the keys," Max wheedled Bones.

"They're in the ignition," Bones told her father, and she got a kiss on the forehead for being a dutiful daughter.

 _What the hell, Bones?_

"Well, it's not like I actually gave him the keys," she rationalized, as if she'd heard him speak.

There was no time to discuss it further. The beam of a flashlight blinded him as the FBI stormed into the building. At least two dozen agents had come looking for him. He recognized every one of them. Even Deputy Director Cullen had shown up in person.

They set the chair upright and cut his arms free. A whine of relief and pain involuntarily escaped his lips when his arms found themselves able to move again.

"Easy," Agent Sugarman coaxed. "The ambulance is right outside."

"I'm not going in the ambulance," Booth objected.

"Yes, you are," said Bones and Cullen in unison.

Cullen grinned and Booth was taken aback. The man had rarely smiled even before the death of his daughter the year before; now he almost never did.

"You listen to your _partner_ , Agent Booth," said Cullen with a mocking mirth that Booth wasn't sure he deserved. "You were the one who pushed to allow Dr. Brennan in the field. Surely you can handle any and all consequences. In fact, she should probably ride in the ambulance with you. Shouldn't you, Dr. Brennan?"

"Yes, I should. Thank you, Deputy Director Cullen," said Bones politely. First Cullen was grinning, and now Bones was being polite. Almost _sweet_. Booth had obviously taken more punches to the head than he'd thought.

Cullen was kneeling in the dust beside Booth, mindless of his $8,000 suit. "How did you manage to call her? While they had you bound like that? I can't imagine they left you alone," Cullen asked.

Booth's eyes flickered to Bones' stricken face. It appeared that in addition to helping fugitives escape, his Bones was now actively lying to the FBI.

"I… well, Kennedy left me rolled in a rug in a hotel room. They had to get me out of that and into…" he broke off in a dry cough. "Water?" he asked to buy himself some time. He needed it, too. Lightner had given him a few sips while playing good cop, but it hadn't been nearly enough.

Someone opened a bottle and wrapped his hand around it. The liquid burned its way down his throat to his stomach.

"I'm sorry," Booth told Cullen. "What happened when is all messed up. They hit me on the head a few times."

"More than a few, I would say," returned Cullen. His eyes swept over the bruises forming on Booth's face with real concern. "I'm the one who's sorry. You'll do your report after you get checked out. We have Gallagher. The details can wait." He nodded at the paramedics. "Get him to the hospital."

Booth didn't argue this time. He stood up before anyone could make any suggestions about stretchers or wheelchairs and made his way to the ambulance under his own power.

The paramedics opened his shirt and examined his stomach where Lightner had kicked him. Bones, of course, had to lean in to get a look, too.

"Let them do their jobs, Bones. You're not that kind of doctor anyway."

She whirled on him in predictable outrage and he couldn't help grinning. He was glad that he hadn't died without more of this. He was glad that he hadn't died without more of _her_.

"Besides," he added, just to tweak her further, "you have to have some respect for my modesty."

"I've seen you with your shirt off before!" she objected emphatically, and he could have sworn that one of the paramedics had to swallow a laugh.

"If they take x-rays, I'll let you see them. That'll make you happy, right?"

She looked ever so slightly mollified.

"You can tell me everything that ever happened to me."

"Not everything," she said quietly, and his eyebrows climbed toward his hairline in surprise. She rarely admitted that there were things she couldn't tell from bones. _People lie, bones don't,_ she was fond of saying. Spending a day with her father must have left her emotionally raw. He'd have to make certain that she was all right.

* * *

When they were left alone in an exam room as they waited for a doctor to make triple sure that the burn on his leg didn't require any further attention, he saw his opportunity. "What was it like? A day with your dad? You must have been working pretty closely together."

"The FBI wouldn't tell me anything. He was the only way I could help. Cam would've tried to keep me in the lab if I'd gone out without him."

"And Cam would've been right," said Booth sharply. Bones was a good shot, and skilled in martial arts, and God knew that she was brilliant. But she had no business messing around with the likes of Gallagher on her own.

"Isn't she the one who's supposed to make sure the rest of us follow the rules?"

"I don't think you violated any Jeffersonian policies with one little daddy-daughter day."

"I lied to the FBI about you calling me. It would have taken too long to tell them how I knew where you were, and they might not have believed me anyway."

"I figured. I'll fudge it over in my report. You did the right thing." If she'd done anything else, he would have died. "Thanks, Bones," he said quietly.

"It's what partners do," she said just as quietly. "Right?"

"Right."

He thought that they would sit in silence until the doctor made his grand entrance, but then Bones spoke again. "It was surreal," she said. "Being with my father again. Needing something more than anything else in the world and knowing he was the only one who could give it to me."

"He came through for you."

"This time." Her light eyes flickered, strangely fathomless. "Did your father always come through for you?"

"No parent comes through every time," said Booth in the understatement of the year. Then he decided that it was time to mitigate, just slightly, one of his lies of omission. "I even lived with my grandparents for a while."

"Just you? Or Jared too?"

The sound of Jared's name made the room lurch around them. He hadn't seen Jared in years. He didn't bring his family into his work. "When did I tell you about Jared?"

"You didn't. You were asking a little boy about his foster brother. You thought that there might have been an accident." She pointed at his hip. "You said that you got that scar playing soldier with your brother Jared."

"Right." He remembered the case now. Trust Bones to file away that nugget of information.

"Was I not supposed to know?" she asked. "Is Jared dead?"

"You're not a fan of subtlety, are you?"

"I don't know what that means."

"I know you don't." He sighed. She had just saved his life. "Jared's in the navy, which some of us in the army would consider worse than dead."

"What about your grandparents? Are they still alive?"

"Pops is."

"Pops," she repeated, trying it out and smiling as she did. He couldn't help but smile back.

"But I don't like to talk about my family a lot, okay?"

"We talk about my family."

"When my family shows up at the FBI or the Jeffersonian, we can talk about them."

"All right."

"Where is that doctor?" he wondered aloud, not only because he wanted Bones off the subject of his family but because he wanted to get this over with so he could get home to his shower and stand under a stream of hot water for at least an hour or two.

"Are you in pain?" she asked frantically. "What hurts?"

"I want to go home and take a shower. That's all."

"They're keeping you overnight," she said. "They decided. I heard them, and I think they're right."

He swore under his breath. He was willing to risk death by concussion or internal bleeding or whatever had the doctors so cautious in exchange for clean clothes. He kept a bag in his office and another in his car for this kind of situation, but he wasn't sure what had become of the car after he'd tracked down Kennedy.

The office was a possibility.

"Can you do me a favor?"

"I'm not helping you sneak out of here."

"I would never do any such thing or ask you to help me," he said primly, and she laughed.

He liked her laugh.

"There's a bag in my office. It has-"

"Oh, your emergency overnight bag," she completed. "Of course." She stood up quickly, ready to run from the room. At the last minute, she turned. "Am I supposed to… bake you a pie or anything?"

He hadn't known what he expected her to say, but it definitely hadn't been that. "Do you know how to bake a pie, Bones?"

"I have cookbooks. Cookbooks have recipes. It can't be that difficult. I am a genius, after all."

"You don't even like pie."

"Fruit shouldn't be cooked. My father says I like snickerdoodles."

He didn't push her on the snickerdoodles, but filed away the information for future use. "You do not have to make me a pie. Why would you have to make me a pie?"

"I don't know. You're in the hospital. You're supposed to bring food to people who had something bad happen to them, but I don't usually... I should have thought of getting your bag for you."

"Bring me my bag now and take me to the diner for pie when I'm released tomorrow morning?" he suggested.

She nodded, satisfied with her marching orders. She leaned toward him for just a second; then she stepped back hastily and vanished.

He knew what the lean meant. For a fraction of a second, Bones had considered kissing Booth on the cheek the way her father had kissed her. Then she'd changed her mind and decided that two years of working side by side in life and death situations didn't make them close enough for a platonic kiss goodbye.

He would never say it out loud, but Bones was downright adorable when she tried to get the interpersonal stuff right. It was almost enough to give him a little more patience while waiting for the doctor.

* * *

After an uncountable (to a normal person at least- only squints counted that high) number of tests and examinations, he was finally permitted to take a shower, and all by himself even if an orderly stood close by in case he needed help. It was nice to be clean again.

He stood under the hot water and let it soothe some of the aches that hadn't quite been chased away by whatever painkillers he'd been fed so far. He turned it off quickly when he heard Bones' voice.

"I have your clothes, Booth," she sang out. "But I'm putting them here and then leaving. See? Respect for your modesty."

He snorted. He should have known that she wouldn't let that go. "Thank you, Bones," he called.

"And I looked at your x-rays. I didn't learn anything new," she added with petulant disappointment. "But you're fine. I'll see you tomorrow."

He was looking forward to it. The pie would be good.

* * *

That night, he dreamed of Bones. It wasn't precisely a sex dream; it was just that he had his head on her naked breasts and it felt good to be there.

After he shook himself awake, he determined that he didn't have any kind of weird or unprofessional feelings for his partner. Obviously the breasts, which were soft, were symbolic of how vulnerable his strong, tough partner was when it came to her family. And he had been touching them because he had spent the past year making it his business to help her reunite with her family, at least to the extent that he could when he knew that he'd have to arrest her father the next time he saw him.

Even though there was nothing untoward about the dream, he decided that, rather than going back to sleep, he would write the report on his kidnapping. Bones had brought everything he needed along with his overnight bag.

The sun was starting to rise by the time he finished the report and emailed it off to Cullen. It was too late to go back to sleep and too early to start agitating for his discharge. Only babies and old people were up this early.

He smiled and reached for the phone.

* * *

The conversation with Pops started the way conversations with Pops always did. Booth asked about Pops' health and told him not to overdo it; Pops told Booth to be careful on the job. Booth assured Pops that he was fine and might have neglected to mention that he was calling from the hospital.

From there, they moved on to discussing Parker, the happenings in Pops' neighborhood, and the state of the Philadelphia sports teams.

And then there was a casual mention of breakfast.

"My partner's coming to pick me up, and we're going together," Booth said. "I've been promised pie for breakfast."

"Didn't know you were working with a partner," said Pops. "He's a good cop?"

"Not a cop," said Booth. "Or a he. It's this liaison with the Jeffersonian thing. It's working so well that it's almost my whole job instead of a little part of it. The scientist I work with, somehow she turned into my partner."

"You feel safe out there with someone who's not carrying a gun?"

 _Safer when she doesn't have a gun than when she does._ "She knows how to handle a gun. She goes to the range, has a hunting license and everything. Even though she's a vegetarian and believes in animal rights."

"Sounds complicated."

"She is."

"And then there's the thing that makes it the most complicated. Is she married, and is she pretty?"

"She's not married, and she's beautiful. But that's the one way it's not complicated."

"She older? She a lesbian?"

"She's a few years younger than I am, and she's definitely not a lesbian, Pops." Booth chuckled.

"Then at some point this will get complicated and you'll need a new partner."

"She's the only forensic anthropologist south of Montreal, so I can't replace her. It'll just have to stay professional and uncomplicated."

"You were exaggerating about how pretty she is, then," Pops decided.

"'I'm not," said Booth.

"Prettier than Rebecca?" asked Pops slyly.

"As pretty," Booth decided. Then he thought it over. "Prettier, because she's never trying to tell me I can't see my son."

The conversation turned back to Parker, but telling Pops about Bones and Bones about Pops left Booth with a strange sense of rightness.

* * *

Bones showed up right on time to spring Booth from the hospital and drive him straight to the diner. She asked him what had happened with Kennedy and Gallagher and Lightner, and he obliged.

"Why didn't you just- just tell them about Kennedy?" Bones wanted to know when his story was finished. There was still a slight hesitance about her on this rare occasion when she was admitting to not having all the answers.

"I needed to give you time to find me," he told her, figuring that she would take that better than _they would have killed me the minute I told them._ She still looked worried, and it had crossed the line from cute to concerning. He was the one who worried about her, not the other way around, and he was not going to allow that dynamic to change any time soon. He didn't even like it when his own family worried about him, so he certainly wasn't going to put up with it from the queen of the squints. "I've been tortured worse," he assured her, before realizing that that wasn't very reassuring. Time to change the subject, then. "So, uh, you hear anything from your old man?"

Bones produced a glass dolphin and a letter. "He left my car in the garage," she said.

The letter, Booth found, was all but a promise to return to discuss Bones' mother. "He'll be back."

"How do you know?" Her past being what it was, Bones wasn't about to trust an obvious promise laid down in black and white when it came to her father. Not even after her father had risked his life and freedom to save an FBI agent because that was what his little girl wanted.

"Max Keenan does not strike me as the kind of guy who leaves things undone," said Booth simply.

"Next time he shows up, what do I do? Do I call you? Do I knock him on the head? What's my obligation?"

"Well, if I were you, Bones, I'd wanna know what he has to tell you about your mother, but that's just me."

Bones was quiet for an instant as she considered that. "There's this old song. It's called _Keep on Trying_."

"Yeah. Poco."

"You know it?"

There was no need to tell her that he'd had it stuck in the back of his mind since he'd heard Max say that, once, it had been important to her.

One of his few memories of his own mother was her firm admonition that while he had the makings of a fine dancer, he would never be a singer. Nonetheless, he quietly sang his answer.

" _I've been drinking now, just a little too much."_

The shock came when she sang back.

" _And I don't know how  
I can get in touch with you.  
And there's only one thing for me to do.  
It's to keep on tryin'"_

Bones had a beautiful singing voice. Her mother had definitely never told her that she would never be a singer. Singing with her made him feel like he had a beautiful singing voice, too.

" _To get home to you."_

They laughed together.

"Yeah, what about it?"

"It's a good old song, right?"

"Right."

 _Right_.

 _ **To be continued, seven years or so down the line in Virginia….**_

 **Auxiliary Disclaimer:** _Some dialog in this chapter is taken directly from_ The Killer in the Concrete, _my particular favorite episode._ Keep on Trying _belongs to Poco._


	5. Virginia

_5\. Virginia (The Conspiracy in the Corpse)_

Booth walked out of the prison on high alert. Danger could come from any direction. Snipers on the roof above them or under the cars in the parking lot. Corrupt cops or prisoners with nothing to lose. A foreign hitman hired by a politician or one of his own colleagues who was now convinced that he was the enemy.

Most of all, he simply expected the guards to come out and inform him that plans had changed and he would be returned to his cell.

He didn't even enjoy it fully when Bones wrapped her arms around him for the first time in months. Even the slightest gesture she had made during visiting hours had been met with a stern admonition of _no touching_ from security.

"How did Caroline manage this?" he asked Bones when it became clear that quietly waiting for disaster to strike wasn't all the plan he needed.

"It wasn't Caroline," said Bones, and that made it worse. She'd wanted to blackmail one of the most powerful men in the country. Trapped in prison, he'd been helpless to stop her. Now she had put herself in more danger than she'd been in simply by virtue of being married to him. Every night in prison he had thanked God and all saints he could think of that Bones hadn't been arrested alongside him. He could handle prison. She couldn't.

"You promised," he objected. He'd been free for less than five minutes and he was already furious with his wife and dreading the moment that he lost her thanks to her misguided need to protect him.

"No, you ordered me not to," said Bones. "There's a distinct difference. He isn't gonna say anything, Booth."

"Come on, you don't know that, okay? They actually think that they cleaned everything off of Angela's computer. You showed our hand."

"So we'll work faster to find whoever is running this conspiracy," she said mildly, as if she hadn't just risked everyone else's lives because she didn't like seeing him behind bars with bruises on his face.

"Okay, great. Did you get anything off of the remains yet? Do we know how he died? Anything?"

"Hodgins and Clark are trying to clean the bones now."

" _Trying_?" In all the years that he'd known Bones, trying had never been good enough for Bones. "Okay, I don't believe this." He was struck by an urgent desire to lock himself back in his cell. Anything to undo the steps Bones had taken.

"Stop, Booth. Just stop. You were going to die in there."

He'd been free for less than ten minutes and his wife was telling him how weak he was. "I can take care of myself," he reminded her.

"No, not in jail, you couldn't. Not a federal agent. They kept pushing your trial back to keep you in there, so…" She regrouped, and he knew the expression on her face. There would be no arguing with her. "That's not the point. I'm not gonna keep fighting with you about this. If it were me in there, you would have done the same thing. You know that that's true."

It was true. It was different, but it was true.

He was supposed to protect her, not the other way around.

Of course, Bones would probably have a rage-induced aneurysm if he said that out loud.

"Look, we're gonna have to move fast now," he conceded. There was no undoing what Bones had done, anyway.

"Fine. It's not the first time that's the case. I have an encrypted laptop for you with all the information Angela decrypted from the chip in Wesley Foster's nipple ring. I assumed you'd want to get right to work when you got home."

Most prisoners dreamed of going home. Booth, however, had blown his home to smithereens on the night of his arrest. The only home Christine had ever known; the only home he and Bones had ever shared; the Mighty Hut that they had rebuilt from scratch was gone forever.

There hadn't been any dreams of home for him.

"Home? Where is that now exactly?" he asked.

"Come," she said quietly, and he let her lead him to her car.

He hated letting her drive. He always had. It was one more way that he wasn't in control. It was one more way that he wasn't protecting her.

He hated the section of Virginia that she let the GPS guide them toward. Well, truthfully he didn't hate it. In fact, it was beautiful. There were nicely wooded backyards that were good for young children to explore. There were houses big enough for everyone in a growing family to have his or her own space. There was a decent (by Beltway standards, anyway) commute to the Hoover and the Jeffersonian.

It was exactly the kind of place he would have chosen to live if money was no object.

It was exactly the kind of place he had vetoed when he and Bones had first moved in together. _She_ could afford a mansionette in the woods. _He_ lived paycheck to paycheck on a mid-level bureaucrat's salary.

Seeley Booth was many things, but he was not the kind of men who married a rich woman and let her support him.

But he'd lost the control over that, too, along with everything else. He'd destroyed their home in a firefight; he'd flatlined on the operating table; and he'd been carted off to prison, a victim of some government-wide conspiracy. She hadn't been in a position to wait for his opinions, let alone approval. She'd had to put a roof over their daughter's head with as little disruption as possible, and she'd used the money generated not by his sweat but by Kathy and Andy's fictional romance to get it there.

He had no right to object, not even if he hated the place.

He almost hoped that he would hate the place.

* * *

He didn't hate the place.

The first thing he noticed was that it felt like _hisandhers_ , just as the Mighty Hut had. His last, semiconscious view of their old home had been one of complete destruction, but at first glance it appeared that Bones had found a way to salvage almost everything.

He ran his hand over his prized fighter plane tailpiece. It had been with him longer than Bones had. It was adorned with new bullet holes, but it had a place of honor on the wall just as it always had.

"What do you think?"

"You kept all these," he said in half-belief.

"You love them. The damage doesn't take that away."

He sighed heavily. Bones had done everything right. There was nothing to complain about. "It's great," he told her honestly. "It's amazing, Bones. Really, it…"

"And I know how you are, Booth," she rushed on. "I didn't just use my money. I spent some of yours, too. A lot, actually."

What she meant was that she'd taken a token few thousand dollars from his salary and put it up against her hundreds of thousands so that symbolically the place would belong to both of them "There's really not much to spend," he couldn't resist acknowledging. "Thanks," he said honestly. "I love it." In an alternate universe it would have been perfect. But now wasn't the time to dwell on the glass house in the woods. Now was the time to solve the case before anyone else got hurt. He sighed again. "Where's the laptop?"

She provided it, just as she'd provided everything else. She pressed him to eat; he refused, his pride still stung from months in prison where he'd had to eat when and what and where he was told. She put a green glass of liquid on the counter beside him. He tasted it and registered it as some kind of kale smoothie. It was so fundamentally not what he would have been force-fed in prison that he almost enjoyed it. Bones looked pleased that he drank it, and he did want to please Bones, he did…

In no time flat, though, Bones was explaining that she had to go to the lab but that he couldn't go to the Hoover because, as she put it, he was a pariah. Of course. She was useful; he was not. She said that Sweets would be over soon to explain the details, and that annoyed Booth even more. Sweets was like Bones- sure, he'd learned to use a gun, but his talents lay elsewhere and he wasn't supposed to be in the thick of things risking his neck. That was Booth's job.

"I have to go," Bones pleaded.

"Sure, yeah," he agreed, as if he had a choice in this or anything else. "Go."

* * *

And so he came to be left alone in a strange house that was, ostensibly, his home.

As soon as Bones left, he gave up on the contents of the laptop and began a proper exploration of the house.

He opened the refrigerator and saw that his wife, the vegetarian, had steaks marinating and ready to grill in preparation for the evening meal. On the bottom shelf was a pie, doubtless baked by the woman who thought fruit shouldn't be cooked.

 _"Am I supposed to… bake you a pie or anything?"_

 _"Do you know how to bake a pie, Bones?"_

 _"I have cookbooks. Cookbooks have recipes."_

 _"You don't even like pie. No, you do not have to make me a pie. Why would you have to make me a pie?"_

 _"I don't know. You're in the hospital. You're supposed to bring food to people who had something bad happen to them, but I don't usually…."_

Back then, she hadn't, usually. Back then, he'd been able to make things better for her even under the most perilous circumstances. Back then, he'd had some semblance of control and usefulness.

He closed the refrigerator and flung open the cabinet beside it. He was immediately confronted with three packages of beef jerky, a substance Bones had found so repulsive that she'd taken it as a sign that they ought to get married when she'd finally managed to bring herself to buy it for him.

She'd left his vintage clocks on the wall of the bathroom off the kitchen. She'd left his manhole cover end table in the living room. He knew for a fact that their old TV had been shattered by bullets, but Temperance Brennan, who didn't see the point of owning a television, had bought the newest, shiniest model and put it right in their living room.

He drifted toward the bedrooms. She had recreated Parker's room exactly- or more likely, Sweets had done it, as much time as he'd spent in the room at the Mighty Hut. Parker himself had visited just once. Booth had missed Parker painfully over the years since Rebecca had moved to England, but lately he'd been grateful that Parker couldn't see him and didn't know what he had become.

Christine's room stole his breath away. In the Mighty Hut, she'd had a nursery; now her room belonged to a little girl. There was a bed in place of a crib; there was a shelf of snow globes in place of a changing table.

The next bedroom had been converted mostly to a storage space. In a normal family that had moved here for a normal reason, this room would be the nursery in waiting. Another boy, forever wishing for train rides the way Parker had? Another girl, a smaller version of Christine with the grit and determination it took to keep pace with her older sister? Booth didn't currently have the imagination to picture them or the energy to hope for them.

The master suite was next. It had a private enclosed porch covered with trees. A bedroom greenhouse? Had Hodgins stocked it with some sort of dangerous plant as a housewarming gift, or was it just a place where he and Bones could… what, precisely? Look at the stars if their lives ever slowed down enough to allow them to breathe?

He glanced into the bathroom. Like their bathroom in the Mighty Hut, there was a tub with whirlpool jets. It looked so new that he wondered if Bones had had it installed upon moving in. Beside the tub sat his beer hat.

She hated his beer hat. She always had.

She'd had the perfect opportunity to throw it out, and she hadn't taken it.

Not only that, the beer hat sat on top of a stack of comic books and a small cooler that, upon examination, was filled with beer.

Bones was really implying that he should take a bath and drink beer and fucking relax in the middle of this mess?

He stormed out of the room and headed for the back of the house.

And at the back of the house was his man cave.

All of his sports memorabilia was there; if anything had been lost, it had been replaced by something just as good. His comic books and his vinyl records were present and accounted for. An autographed copy of Foreigner's _Double Vision_ had been framed and hung on one wall; yet another top-of-the-line television hung on the opposite wall. The cable company's list of channels lay beneath the remote control, and a bright red circle indicated that Bones had bought every sports package there was- even the ones they hadn't had at the Mighty Hut. The bill must be ridiculous. He was going to call the cable company and cancel at least half of it as soon as he finished his exploration.

Beside the man cave, in the far corner, was what a normal person probably would have deemed an office or a library but what Bones no doubt called her anthropologist cave.

For the first time, he smiled. She'd taken care of herself, too.

The room felt like Bones. It was much like her old apartment: cooler and neater than the rest of the house, and home to the more bizarre of the artifacts she'd collected in her travels around the world. There were books from floor to ceiling on two walls. No television here, that was for sure.

He was drawn to the desk (that was necessarily new, as her old one had been blown to smithereens) and half-consciously began sifting through the paperwork. There were some letters from her publisher and some mortgage-related documents that he was suddenly too tired to read.

On the other side of the desk was what looked like a photo album that he hadn't seen before. Curious, he flicked it open and was confronted with a picture of Christine dated the day after he'd been sent to prison. On the opposite page was a note that Christine and Max had spent the day playing with rubber duckies in a wading pool set up in the living room.

He half-stumbled into a club chair tucked beside the bookcases with the album in his arm.

As he'd suspected, there was a photograph for every day that he had missed and a note keeping him up to date on Christine's progress. She'd chosen a purple shag throw rug for her bedroom. She'd graduated from pull-ups to regular underwear. She'd spent the day at the zoo with Sweets. She and Michael Vincent had broken a window playing catch indoors. She'd said she'd wanted to sit at the "bar" when she'd meant "lunch counter" and the waitress had laughed at her.

The most bittersweet shock of all came when he saw a picture of Christine sitting on a couch beside Hank. Christine looked nervous, and Hank…

Pops looked sick.

 _We went to check on Hank,_ Bones' note read. _He is feeling much better and assures me that the nurses provided excellent care during his illness. Christine was initially concerned; Hank won her over but first requested that I put my phone down and stop taking pictures. He asked Christine whether she realizes that she is beautiful, and Christine nodded enthusiastically._

Bones hadn't told him that Pops had been sick. He and Bones were going to discuss that as soon as he finished snooping through the album that she obviously hadn't meant for him to discover on his own, or at least as soon as they solved the case.

He returned the album to its place on her desk and returned himself to the laptop.

* * *

As promised, Sweets arrived with an update on the case and multiple platitudes about how he needed no thanks for the way he had helped Bones and Christine move into their new home because Booth surely would have done the same for any of his friends. Booth was tired of hearing what he _would have_ done. He wanted to be _doing_ something.

He went out to question a witness only to find that he had a tail. He would have relished pummeling the man within an inch of his life, but he turned out to be a Sweets-appointed babysitter by the name of Special Agent James Aubrey. Aubrey was barely older than Sweets, and everyone knew that Sweets was a perpetual child.

Booth did not want to be watched over by anyone, let alone a child, no matter how much Sweets and Caroline insisted that Aubrey was just the man he needed.

He didn't _need_ anyone.

* * *

But Bones decided that she needed him, and when Bones decided something, convincing her to believe otherwise was a process that took years.

He couldn't hold out for years.

Just being in their bedroom, listening to her talk about the case as they got ready for bed, began to unravel the knot in his chest that he hadn't quite known had been there.

"I missed you," he said. He knew that he was in a foul mood and he knew that it wasn't her fault that he couldn't break through the anger and pain and betrayal and the sense that the world had been turned upside down. He should have been able to break through it. He should have been able to show her how perfect and loved and appreciated she was. He should have been able to tell her that he knew that she had carefully made note of everything he'd ever he'd wanted in a house and incorporated it into this one.

She crossed the room, and her hands were gentle and knowing on his arms.

"I'm fine," he told her, because he did not need her to bake pies and buy overpriced cable packages and draw fucking baths for him, let alone take off his shirt.

She was trying to take off his shirt.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Your coracohumeral ligament is strained, Booth. Let me help you."

Strange as it was, he pointless use of scientific terminology (she couldn't have just said that he'd tweaked his shoulder?) had long since become a turn-on for him. It meant Bones. It meant home.

"No, I don't want you to get all 'cocoa humerous' on me," he objected. He was independent, he was self-reliant, he was an island. He didn't want to be turned on.

He was turned on. The months in prison had deprived him of more than his favorite meals and watching sports on television.

He wasn't sure whether the groan that passed his lips was one of pain or one of anticipation. Bones, though, stopped in her tracks when she saw the bruises on his chest.

She was right. He wouldn't have been able to survive the beatings forever.

"Booth," she breathed, and she looked so pained that it took him an instant to reassure her.

"Yeah. I'm fine. It just, you know, hurts when I breathe, that's all." The attempt at humor fell flat.

"I won't hurt you," said Bones, and he had never been more grateful for her willingness to take all comments literally. "I promise this won't hurt a bit."

Whatever willpower might have remained to him dissolved with a kiss. "All right," he agreed, his words already slurring as his body screamed to let Bones have her way with him.

She backed him onto the bed (she had replaced the mattress, he observed irrelevantly) and reverently removed the rest of his clothing. She took stock of the rest of his bruises and dropped gentle kisses on them before returning her lips to his.

Her clothes followed his into the pile on the floor. One more kiss on the lips, and then she straddled him.

Like almost every red-blooded man on the planet, Booth liked good old fashioned cowgirl-style sex. The spectacular view alone made it an experience worth having, and he and Bones had had enough sex over the years that she knew exactly when to move quickly, and when to move slowly, and when to lick her lips in a way that made it all the more erotic. She was in total control.

He was tired of other people being in control.

Without warning, he grasped her by her hips and flung her off of him and onto her back. Her face registered surprise, and then pleasure as he straddled her in his turn and pounded into her until the worst of the fear and anger and loneliness pulsed out of him.

He knew her body like she knew his, and he brushed his thumb over her just so to make her climax, too.

Just before he started to berate himself for not having made certain that she'd come first, she screamed his name and grabbed him in another kiss. And it was difficult to berate himself for anything when she did that.

A moment later, she slipped into the bathroom to clean herself up and returned with two cans of beer from the cooler he'd seen earlier that day. She handed one to him and he accepted it.

"Are you sure that you don't want a bath?" she asked quietly as she climbed back into the bed. (The new mattress was higher than their old one had been. It would take years to get used to this.) "The tub is very nice, and I know how you like bathtubs."

"Did you have the bathroom redone after you bought the house?" he asked, remembering his earlier suspicion.

"Yes. It had almost everything that you told me that you wanted when we were looking at houses the last time, but I needed to make a few minor modifications."

"I know. You were… you were very…" he wasn't quite sure how to tell her what he'd sensed when he'd explored the house. "You showed a lot of heart, Bones," he settled for at last.

"Did you look around more thoroughly while I was gone?"

"I did."

"Did you find it satisfactory?"

"More than satisfactory."

"Did you find your man cave?"

He almost smiled, and it almost didn't hurt. "And I found your anthropologist cave. I found the photo album on your desk."

She stiffened almost imperceptibly. If she hadn't been lying naked inches away from him, he might not have noticed. "Then I don't need to decide whether you're ready to see it," she said. "I know how much it upset you to be away from Christine when I was on the run. If I hadn't still been breastfeeding, I would have left her with you. You know that, right?"

He didn't answer. It didn't matter. He'd missed what seemed like all of Parker's life and half of Christine's. He was doing better than his old man, but his old man hadn't set the bar very high. "There was a picture of Christine with Pops, and he looked really bad," Booth pressed.

"His heart medication needed to be readjusted," said Bones, bluntly but not unkindly. "The staff did everything they could. They love him there."

"I'm the one who loves him and I'm the one who was supposed to be there. Where did you tell him I was?"

"I told him the truth."

Booth's heart jumped into his throat. Pops was too old for that kind of revelation, plain and simple. He'd had to deal with one grandson's dishonorable discharge from the service; he certainly shouldn't have had to think about the other grandson going to prison.

"I told him that you really wanted to be there, but that there was a case at work that made it impossible and it was out of your control," Bones continued.

"And he believed that? He didn't push you for details?"

She looked sad. "He was very sick, Booth. He spent what energy he had trying to charm Christine." She managed a weak smile. "And he did."

"I should have been there."

"Yes, you should have," she agreed. "But if you had been, there was nothing that you could have done that I didn't do."

There was never anything he could do, lately.

And nothing Bones could say or do would make that better.

 _ **To be concluded a year or so later, back in Pennsylvania...**_

* * *

 _Auxiliary Disclaimer:_ _Much of the dialog in this chapter is borrowed directly from S10's The Conspiracy in the Corpse._


	6. Pennsylvania Again

_Pennsylvania Again _

_(between Season 10 and Season 11)_

* * *

The first thing Bones did when they arrived at the hospital was lunge for the gift shop and gulp down half a bottle of orange juice before she even managed to pay for it, although she did check to assure herself that it was pasteurized.

"Bones, I would have stopped," Booth told her urgently. He had driven like a bat out of hell to get to Pennsylvania when they'd gotten the call about Pops' condition, but that didn't mean that he prioritized anything above Bones' safety, health, and comfort. She was eight months pregnant and she had insisted on coming with him nonetheless. He hadn't put up much of a fight. He wanted her with him. He always wanted her with him.

That was part of why she had to understand that he was better now. He was going to take care of her and their children. There would be no more slips, no more lies, no more crises of faith. He was going to grieve for Pops, but he was going to honor the man who had been his father in all but biology by protecting his family the way Pops had taught him.

"You should have told me you were thirsty," he reprimanded Bones when she continued chugging the juice before tossing the empty bottle into a recycling bin.

"I'm not thirsty," she said blithely. "I'm stimulating fetal movement. The cold liquid and the sugar tend to jostle-"

"Is the baby all right?" he asked frantically. If she'd neglected to tell him that there was a problem with their unborn son, that was far worse than failing to tell him that she needed a drink.

"He's fine." Her hand caressed his cheek, and he let himself lean into the touch. "I just wanted to make sure Hank would have a chance to feel him move if he's able."

Booth nodded stiffly. That was downright thoughtful of Bones. He was suddenly unable to find his voice to tell her, though, so he grabbed her hand and led her down the hall.

"One more thing, Booth," she said, and he slowed his steps and turned to look at her. "I'd like to name the baby Hank, if that's all right with you."

He felt his eyes start to burn with tears; he drew on all of his self control to blink them back. If Pops had any awareness left at all, the last thing he needed to see was his grandson in apparent distress. Booth had to reassure Pops that he was content and at peace. It wouldn't be a lie, either.

Not trusting his voice, he settled for nodding his agreement once again as they made their way through the maze of hospital corridors to Pops' room.

"Hey, Pops," Booth sang out in a forced cheery voice that sounded like nails on a blackboard even in his own head. He was supposed to be better at lying than this. As little as he liked to be reminded of it, the Booths were, after all, a family of actors.

Pops' skin was ashen and his shrunken body was surrounded by a collection of machines which didn't quite drown out the sound of his too-labored breathing.

For all that, Booth was almost sure that he detected an eyeroll when Pops turned his head at the sound of his voice.

"Hi, Hank," said Bones. She, at least, sounded normal, and Booth let himself hold onto that. Bones grabbed for Pops' hand and, as she'd promised, placed it on her abdomen. A glitter of delight broke through the unhealthy film covering Pops' eyes. "Hank," said Bones, smiling and playfully formal, "I'd like you to meet Hank."

Bones and Pops stared at each other for a long moment, and Booth scrambled to get a chair in the right place so that Bones could sit without removing Pops' hand. Booth could see the baby moving even through Bones' clothes. The orange juice had done the trick.

"He'll be here in a few weeks," said Booth needlessly. "If you wanted to stay around." It was a stupid thing to say, but it had fallen out of his mouth without permission.

"Don't think that will be happening, Shrimp," Hank rasped hoarsely. His voice was no longer quite his own. "But I'm glad I've got an invitation all the same." He rubbed his hand over Bones' stomach, the one caress he would ever give his namesake. "Thank you, sweetheart," he said to Bones. With great effort, he tried to put his hand back on the bed; he didn't quite manage it, and Bones helped him instead.

Only then did Booth cover his grandfather's wrinkled hand with his own.

* * *

Hank faded in and out of consciousness four times before Jared and Padme arrived late that evening. Booth ran to the front of the hospital to meet them so that they wouldn't waste any time navigating the complicated hospital hallways. Pops' priest had arrived to hear his last confession, and Booth had left them a few moments' privacy for that.

Jared and Padme had been in India, and Booth thought that his brother must have called in dozens of favors and charmed people on three continents to arrive so quickly. For all that, it almost hadn't been quickly enough.

"Too late?" Jared assessed his brother's face as they strode back to the room with an arm over a shoulder in place of a real hug. There was no time for hugging.

"Almost. The priest is here."

"Extreme Unction?" asked Jared, looking as if he might vomit.

"You're supposed to say Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick," Booth corrected, even though he never called it that in his head, either.

"Last Rites are Last Rites. He's not sick, he's dying,"

Padme reached for Jared's hand.

Booth had grabbed Bones' hand at exactly this place in the corridor when they'd arrived that morning.

It was funny how things worked.

They rushed past a lounge where the NBA playoffs were blaring from a television set. Jared glanced at Booth. "No one born after 1985 understands how dominant Charles Barkley was," Jared complained. "They see him being a goofball on the halftime show and they don't get what he was to Philadelphia sports back when Philadelphia sports weren't a joke."

Booth stared at his brother in disbelief.

"I'm just trying to get a grip, Seeley," Jared defended.

"You're right about Barkley," Booth conceded.

Bones was waiting for them outside the room (he'd told her to go to the hotel and rest, with predictable results) the four of them entered together.

"Jared," croaked Pops.

"Got here as fast as I could," said Jared.

"I know you did."

 _I believe in God,  
the Father almighty,  
Creator of heaven and earth,_

Booth was in the hospital room with his wife, and his brother, and his brother's wife, while the priest began the Apostles' Creed.

 _and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,  
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,  
born of the Virgin Mary,  
suffered under Pontius Pilate,  
was crucified, died and was buried;  
he descended into hell;_

Booth was also thirteen years old and lying on the floor of his father's kitchen, hot and sick and wondering if he could save Jared before he found a way to end his own life.

 _on the third day he rose again from the dead;  
he ascended into heaven,  
and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty;  
from there he will come to judge the living and the dead._

Pops' hand was warm and solid and loving on Booth's shoulder the next morning.

The priest had holy oil ready to anoint Pops.

When Edwin Booth had died, Bones had told Booth that time wasn't linear and that his few good memories of his father were still happening as they spoke. It had been a strangely comforting thought, but it hadn't been as real as it was now.

He was in two places and times; then he was in three.

He saw his youngest son, a second Hank Booth with bright eyes and tousled hair. Hank was smiling in the sunlight and asking why the Amish made root beer, and Booth didn't know because he hadn't listened when Hank had explained it to Jared.

And Hank wasn't around to explain to Hank, and Hank and Hank would have adored each other, he just knew it.

 _I believe in the Holy Spirit,  
the holy Catholic Church,  
the communion of saints,  
the forgiveness of sins,  
the resurrection of the body,  
and life everlasting. Amen._

The priest reached for the oil.

The part of Booth that was thirteen reached for Jared.

He was surprised when Jared reached back with the hand of a grown man who had built a life for himself.

 _Through this holy anointing may the Lord in his love and mercy help you with the grace of the Holy Spirit. May the Lord who frees you from sin save you and raise you up._

By his side, Bones watched him with sad, careful attention. For once, there was no comment that she didn't think that olive oil was going to offer Pops a reprieve for any sins that he had committed and that it might be put to better use drizzled over pasta. For once, she wasn't wriggling with interest at the anthropological significance of the way different cultures viewed death.

 _Our Father, Who art in heaven  
Hallowed be thy name_

More than once, Booth had said those words while expecting to die.

Pops' voice had faltered; he wouldn't make it through the prayer, but Booth could feel the strength that flowed in his direction when he and Jared spoke together.

 _Thy kingdom come,  
Thy will be done  
On earth as it is in heaven._

Pops lay dying inches away from them.

Pops was also at the rink, having somehow finagled skating lessons for two boys who didn't even know how desperately they wanted to learn.

 _Give us this day our daily bread  
And forgive us our tresspasses  
As we forgive those who trespass against us._

Pops was struggling to keep his eyes open.

Pops was sitting at his kitchen table, having prepared his grandson's daily bread in the form of grilled cheese.

 _And lead us not into temptation  
But deliver us from evil.  
Amen._

There would have been much more evil in the world if there had never been a Hank Booth.

Hank was fading from consciousness; he seemed not to be aware of the final blessing and prayer offered by the priest.

The priest offered to stay until the last, but Booth and Jared agreed that all that needed doing had been done.

* * *

Pops revived twice more that night. The first time, he rallied his voice well enough to expound on how he was sure that he had raised Seeley and Jared properly because they had had the good sense to marry Temperance and Padme. The second time, he wasn't able to speak but he was able to look at them with recognition through bleary blue eyes.

Then he didn't revive anymore.

Booth had seen dozens, even hundreds, of deaths. Some had been sudden; some had been drawn out. Too many had been his fault. Almost all of them had been painful.

Most of the lives had ended prematurely. Children killed on the streets of war-torn cities. Young men like Teddy Parker cut down in service to their country. Bones' pet intern, Vincent, begging to be allowed to stay. Sweets, with his ludicrous assurances that the world was better than they thought it was.

Teddy and Vincent and Sweets hadn't seen children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. They hadn't spent decades married to the women they'd loved.

It seemed like he should feel less grief for Pops, knowing that Pops' life had been long and full and that his death had been surrounded by love.

But that wasn't how it felt at all when he kissed Pops' cheek for the last time and Jared did the same.

There had been nearly ninety years and Booth still wanted more.

* * *

After a restless night in a hotel room (he wouldn't have bothered lying down if he hadn't known that that was the only way to make Bones get any rest), Booth found himself presented with a packet of information advising him that all arrangements for his grandfather's funeral had been made. He and Jared were expected to show up the next day; nothing more.

They were, however, invited to take anything they wanted from Pops' room at the assisted living facility that had been his home for almost ten years.

Pops had given away most of his belongings when he'd sold his house and moved into assisted living, and sorting through the room took the four of them only a few hours.

They found his Bible and his watch. Jared said that Booth should have them; Booth said that Jared should have them; and Padme and Bones announced that they would make the decision and their husbands could just accept what came home with them.

They found a notebook in which Hank had kept records on the assisted living staff. There were notes on children's names, educational goals, and where they liked to vacation. "No wonder he was so popular with the staff," Padme murmured. "Every time he saw them, he remembered what was important in their lives and he asked."

They found a bright orange Flyers onesie with a note attached: _for Seeley's baby._ As if there had been any doubt. Bones reverently tucked it into her purse.

And they found two plain white envelopes, one addressed to each of Hank's grandsons.

Jared collapsed into Hank's chair and began to read his letter right away. Booth retreated to the hotel room to read his.

 _Dear Seeley,_

 _I know that you will try to be here when the end comes for me, but I've been on borrowed time for a while now and I thought that it would be better to have a goodbye in writing for you. You know that I have never wanted to do anything to give God the idea that I'm ready to go. After this many years, though, God knows that I'm not fooling anyone and I'm sure He won't hold it against me because I want to do a few things to make this easier on you and Jared. The people from the assisted living facility can tell you that the funeral has been planned._

 _Hold the funeral quickly, try to laugh more than you cry, and get back to your beautiful life with your beautiful wife and children. Temperance was down here last week with Christine. I am, of course, concerned about where you are that you weren't able to come, but I have faith that you will come through whatever it is. You always have. I do hope that you'll let Temperance take care of you. She's a good woman and she loves you. She's exactly what your grandmother and I wanted for you. It is the last great blessing of my life that I lived long enough to meet her and your children._

 _I worry about you because that's my job, but not because you ever gave me a reason to doubt you. When your grandmother and I first took you and Jared to live with us, there were some raised eyebrows around town who thought that you would be too much for us. This was, as you well know, utter bullshit. We would have handled anything you threw at us because you were ours and we loved you._

 _But the fact of the matter, Seeley, is that a pack of monkeys could have raised you and you would have turned out just fine. (Do monkeys live in packs? I don't know. Ask Temperance, she probably does.) You were an easy kid to raise. You were a rule-follower, strong-willed, socially adept, and absolute Teflon when it came to peer pressure. You were smart and funny and generous and a pleasure to be around. You still are._

 _I don't take credit for you, but you are my pride and joy all the same. There has never been a day of your life that you didn't make my life better. If by chance we didn't get a last goodbye in person, remember how very much more important all the hellos we've had over the years were._

 _Please be happy, and please let the people who love you, love you. I wasn't around for your first words but I think that they were probably "I can do it myself." You can, but you don't have to._

 _Love,_

 _Pops_

It was a nice letter. He let Bones read it, and she told him that a group of monkeys was usually called a troop but that it did depend on the specific species.

They called Max to check on Christine, and they spent another mostly sleepless night awaiting the funeral.

* * *

The funeral was short and to the point.

The funeral was also full of Pops' girlfriends and ex-girlfriends.

At any rate, there were five of them. They were all very nice, and they all seemed to be friends.

Padme thought it was hilarious.

Jared thought it was inspiring.

Bones thought it demonstrated changing social mores.

Booth just wanted it to be over, because he didn't want to hear one more time what a wonderful grandson he'd been.

* * *

He had planned to drive home just after the funeral, thinking that he could come back to Pennsylvania if any loose threads turned up, but Bones slumped onto the bed and fell asleep, and he didn't want to wake her. They'd have enough chronic exhaustion in their lives in a few weeks when the second Hank Booth made his grand entrance. And perhaps if Bones woke up and felt well enough they could go out to dinner with Jared and Padme. Booth had barely seen Jared since he'd taken a position as the head of security for an American company that did business in India. Padme was herself American-born, but she had plenty of extended family in India and the arrangement seemed to work for them.

Pops had at least been able to die pleased with both of his grandsons' lots in life, even if he had outlived his miserable son Edwin.

He remembered when Pops had come to tell him about Edwin's death.

" _Your father made you sole executor and beneficiary."_

" _Beneficiary? Having him for a father wasn't exactly a benefit, Pops."_

" _Seeley-"_

" _Look, you were my father. All right? He was never there for me. You raised me, not him. He was never there, understand? You don't have to defend him to me."_

" _I wasn't. I was just trying to remind you that he was my son. Good or bad, he was my son._

 _And I've got to tell you, I'm a little disappointed that you don't seem to see the hurt I'm feeling."_

" _I'm sorry, Pops."_

" _You don't think I know what it was like for you? You don't think I feel responsible? I raised him. Don't you feel responsible for your boy? Now, Seeley, we're family. We've got to get through this together."_

" _You're right. Okay, anything for you, Pops. Anything."_

" _I want to read you this letter. It was among your father's things."_

" _No. It's too late for that."_

" _Now, wait a minute. The letter's to me, not to you. Just shut up and listen. There's a lot here about growing up. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Oh, here we are. 'I didn't write a letter to Seeley because I knew he'd rip up anything I sent him and he should. If you can find a way, let him know I loved him. He and Jared deserved a better father than me. A father as good as I had. Thank you for raising him to be the man I could never be.'"_

Booth paced the length of the hotel room floor, lost in memories. He had been out of line not to acknowledge Pops' grief at outliving his own son and Pops' ambivalence at having to raise his grandchildren because the child he had raised had abandoned them.

For all the times that Pops had told him how much he loved him, Booth had always wondered, just a bit, what kind of life Pops would have had if he hadn't been forced back into parenthood when he should have been enjoying his retirement. Hank hadn't chosen to raise Seeley and Jared. Edwin had chosen to leave.

He continued pacing until he knocked a tray of glasses off a table and woke Bones from her nap.

"Booth?" she asked groggily.

"Go back to sleep, Bones." He kissed her gently and caressed her stomach. "You and Hank need your rest."

"What were you muttering about?"

"I wasn't muttering."

"What were you thinking about?"

"Nothing."

"Pops?" she asked.

"Yeah." He sighed. "I was wondering what he and my father said to each other when Dad was dying. I know there was a letter from Dad to Pops but it wasn't with Pops' stuff the other day so he must have gotten rid of it."

"Didn't Hank read you that letter when your dad died?" she asked.

"Some of it. The part where Dad said he loved us and was glad Pops could be the father we deserved when he couldn't." He sighed again. "I wonder if they talked about it, too. If Pops said anything back. If Pops was ever pissed that he had to do Dad's job. If Dad ever explained why he just left instead of trying to get his shit together. You know, I loved him. He was beating the hell out of us and I was planning on killing myself, but I _loved_ him. I used to make excuses for him when I first moved in with Pops. Told him my Dad had just had a hard life when I could barely sit up because I was so sore from being beaten."

"I know," said Bones.

"How could you know? I've never told you that." He shook his head emphatically. "I would remember telling you that."

Bones gestured that he should come and sit beside her on the bed. He might have argued if she hadn't been so heavily pregnant with his baby, but she was and he didn't.

"I know that you were very defensive of your father and his role in your life when you were a teenager because Hank told me."

"When?" asked Booth. "This week?" She'd been alone with Pops for a few minutes on his last day, but he hadn't been up to major deathbed revelations. "When you took Christine to see him while I was in prison?" Pops hadn't seemed well enough for important conversations then, either.

"No," confirmed Bones. "It was years ago. The first time I met him, when he came to visit you after he punched the nurse for not letting him smoke a cigar."

Booth almost laughed at the memory. It was a good one. Pops had been a good man, if sometimes an infuriating man. "What was he doing telling you stories like that? We weren't married. We weren't even together."

"I know." She glanced ruefully at her stomach. "He gave me specific instructions to hold you, and I promised, but I did not foresee being eight months pregnant with your child. Certainly not for the second time."

"Why would you need to hold me to tell me something I already know?"

She twisted away and began to stack the pillows against the wall behind the bed. He brushed her aside and took over before arranging her with her back against the pillows and himself close beside her with his arm over her shoulders.

"Close enough?" he asked. "You're right here taking care of me."

"You're humoring me, but I don't care," said Bones, pressing herself even more tightly against his side.

He dropped his free hand to her stomach. "We shouldn't do this right now if it's going to stress you out," he offered, even though he was burning with a need to know what had happened.

Bones didn't take him up on the offer, and instead launched into her story. "The three of us were eating at the diner and you were called away. Hank told me how proud he was of you, and I told him how highly you always spoke of him and how he'd been there for you after your father left. That was when Hank told me that he'd never told you that it was his fault."

"What was his fault? My old man being a jackass? But he knew that-"

"No," Bones interrupted. Her fingers danced over his chest and he hoped that she couldn't feel his heart pounding. "He meant that he was the one who told your father to leave. Hank told your father that he didn't deserve to be a father and to get out." Bones tilted her head in thought. "He didn't specifically say that he hit your father, but I got that impression."

"He did," Booth decided. "I noticed the next day that his knuckles were bruised. I knew he'd hit someone, but it wasn't me and it wasn't Jared so I didn't care."

"He felt like he should have figured out another way to handle it. He felt like he should have found a way to keep you and Jared safe without convincing your father to leave and never come back. But when he saw your father beating you-"

"He saw?" Booth gave up on trying to control his pounding heart and on trying to let Bones hold him. He bounced back to his feet. "How did he see that?"

"I don't know. All I know is that he saw your father hitting you and that was why he told your father to leave. He told me to tell you when the time was right."

"And you decided that the right time was after Pops was gone so I couldn't tell him that he had nothing to worry about?"

"This is the first time the subject has ever come up, Booth," she said rationally. "We don't dwell on the bad parts of our past. And Hank knew that you loved him and that nothing could change that. He felt the same way about you."

"I could have told him that we were better off with him. Without Dad. That there was nothing Dad could have done that would have made our childhood better."

"You did tell him that," she said, still devastatingly logical.

" _He saw?_ " Booth repeated. "He definitely saw?"

"He said so three separate times. He said he saw your father beating you. Why is that important?"

"It's not," said Booth irritably.

"Your tone and body language suggest otherwise."

He bit back a retort that she knew nothing about tone and body language. She waited patiently for him to speak. "That's not how I thought it happened. That's all. It was one of the biggest, most important turning points of my life and I thought I was in control of it in ways that I wasn't. And now I'm never going to know exactly what happened because Dad is dead and Pops is dead."

"Your father and your grandfather are gone," she agreed. "But there's one other person who was there that night, and he's right down the hall."

" _Jared_?" Booth asked, wondering if there might be some other mysterious person in the hotel that had escaped his notice.

"My brother Russ knew things about our childhood that he didn't tell me until we were adults," Bones reminded him. Her face wrinkled in annoyance. "Or maybe I should say my brother Kyle."

"You can't be mad at Russ for holding out on you," said Booth, always more comfortable with Bones' family drama than his own. "Max told him that you would die if he admitted that your family changed your names. He was only, what, seven, eight years old when that went down?"

"And Jared would have been… eight when you moved in with your grandparents?"

"I'm not having that conversation with Jared," Booth declared.

"But you should probably have some kind of conversation with him while you're both here," Bones suggested. "Why don't you go out to dinner, just the two of you?"

"Because I'm not leaving you alone in a strange place while you're eight months pregnant, that's why."

"I am showing no signs of going into labor. And although I would still prefer to give birth at home with a doula, there is a hospital next door to this hotel. And if this is what it takes to get you to talk to Jared, I imagine that Padme would be willing to go to dinner with _me_."

Before Booth entirely knew what had happened, he and Jared had been hustled out the door.

As soon as the two of them were standing in the parking lot looking at one another, Booth knew where to go. He gestured that Jared should get into the car with him, and Jared, falling into a very old habit, obeyed.

* * *

Jared's face lit with delight when he realized where they were going. "Perfect, Seeley," he beamed. "Pops would approve."

For many years, maybe even most of the years, Booth had loved his little brother fiercely but hadn't liked him very much. " _We aren't friends," he'd once told Jared firmly. "I'm your big brother."_

That changed whenever they had skates on their feet and ice under their skates. They loved hockey whether they were watching it or playing it. They loved the cool air reflecting up from the ice and the first unsteady step onto the rink. They loved the sensation of blades cutting ice; they loved the sound of it, too. They'd been smitten since the moment Pops had finagled their first lesson.

That lesson had been one of the few times in their life that they had been truly equal. Seeley was older, of course, and anything athletic came naturally to him. Older wasn't necessarily an advantage when it came to learning a completely different way to move, though; taller just meant that he had farther to fall. At times during their first dozen lessons, Jared had been demonstrably better than Seeley, and that had never happened before. At anything.

Jared, never one to downplay his own accomplishments, had bragged and preened. Seeley had enjoyed it all so much that he hadn't cared.

As they sat side-by-side lacing up their boots, Booth shot a sideways smirk at Jared. "Are you sure that you're up to this?" he teased. "Do they have ice in Mumbai?"

"That's so nice of you to be concerned, big brother," said Jared. "Especially in your very old age. You could break a hip doing this, you know."

The rink wasn't very crowded, so they weren't bothering anyone when they clambered onto the ice and began to match each other stroke for stroke, pushing each other to go faster and faster as they circled the rink.

It appeared that Jared had found somewhere to skate in Mumbai after all, because he showed no signs of rust, not even while wearing rented skates of questionable quality.

The first several laps calmed Booth's mind and body like nothing else had done that week, and he could tell by Jared's face that Jared felt the same way.

After a few more laps, Booth began to consider that Bones might have been right. Jared had been there that night. Jared might have answers even though Booth wasn't positive what his questions were. Booth let himself lose speed, and Jared spun around, skating backwards to face him.

"You really getting tired already?" asked Jared, as if he wasn't sure whether to make fun of his brother or be concerned.

"Just wanted to slow down to ask you something," said Booth.

Jared shrugged that Booth should continue.

"What do you remember about the last night before Dad left and Pops took us home?"

It might have been a coincidence that Jared's skate hit a rough spot on the ice at just that moment. Jared stumbled hard, and Booth spun sideways as quickly as he could to keep from slamming into Jared and knocking them both to the ice. Their arms did wind up entangled for a moment before they both regained their balance and wordlessly began to skate forward again.

"We haven't ever talked about that," said Jared when they'd reached the far side of the rink.

"I haven't talked about it with anyone."

"I don't think I have, either. Not in any kind of detail."

"So what do you remember?"

Jared sighed heavily. "It was hot. There'd been a heat wave all week and Dad promised that we could have ice cream. I swear that was the only thing that was… God, Seeley, you were there. You know what happened."

"I'm not sure I do," Booth said.

Jared sighed again. "All right. I was dumb enough to go off on the old man about how he'd promised us ice cream and how it was a shitty thing to go back on that promise. He took off his belt, and for some reason he went for you instead of me. Whipped you. I lost count at fifteen. Then he grabbed your hair and banged your head into the table and then the wall. You threw up and you passed out. I thought you were dead. He told me to clean up the mess and I did. We went upstairs, I got in bed with you because I still thought you were about to die, and that was it. He didn't come back."

"Did you call Pops?"

"I know you always thought I did. I didn't. I woke up the next morning and I heard someone downstairs in the kitchen. I thought it was Dad. I walked down the stairs as quiet as I could. I was going to look and see if he looked mad, or if he was in a good mood. But it wasn't Dad. It was Pops, and when he turned and looked at me he asked what I wanted for breakfast like he was just supposed to be there."

"You didn't hear Pops and Dad fighting?"

"Not at all, and I was awake half the night. Did you hear anything?"

"Did you ever think about why Dad left and didn't come back?"

"Pops ran him off," said Jared easily, as if that were no great revelation to him.

Booth suddenly lacked the desire to keep moving forward; this time, Jared let himself stop, too, before Booth asked how Jared knew what had apparently been a secret.

"I talked to Dad. Once."

" _What_?" Booth exploded. Of everything Jared could have said, he hadn't expected that. "When? Why? How?"

"They cover all the question-asking basics at the FBI nowadays, don't they?" observed Jared.

Booth was not in the mood. "Tell me what the hell happened, and don't leave anything out this time."

"Okay." Jared drew a deep breath and slowly began to skate again. Booth kept pace with him. The rhythm of their skates cutting into the ice would have soothed him at any other time. "Padme and I got married."

"I was there. I was the best man."

"And you didn't rumage through the presents and cards looking for something good to steal, which is what some of my friends would have done if I'd made one of them the best man. If you had done that, you would have found a card that… that had my name on it in writing you didn't quite remember but that gave you a weird feeling. Or maybe you would have remembered. I didn't. I just knew it was off and I didn't know why until I opened it and saw that it was signed by Dad."

"So you, what, wrote him a thank you note?"

"I was furious. It didn't have a return address so I went to Pops and asked if he knew where Dad was. He admitted that he did, and I went right up to Dad at the V.A. and threw that card in his face. I told him never to contact me again. I told him not to contact Padme. I told him not to bother you, or Parker, or any other kids you ever had. I told him I wasn't ever going to have kids because I don't want to be like him, but that just in case he couldn't bother my non-existent hypothetical kids either."

"I like it so far," admitted Booth.

"Then the bastard said he was sorry."

"And you believed him?"

"Well, he was lying there all yellow and pathetic. Alcoholic hepatitis, liver failure, the whole nine yards. Hard to be in that position and not realize you fucked up your life."

"Please don't tell me you felt sorry for him."

"I didn't. I said it was too little, too late. He said he agreed. Then he said that instead of deciding not to have kids, I should decide not to be a drunk. I'd been sober for two years and I told him that. He said he'd gone two years over and over, but he'd always gone back, and that he was sorry he'd passed it on to me. He said that was why he reached out to me and not to you. He said you didn't understand what it was to fail, but I did, so I might understand him and understand the warning."

"Did you tell him about me and gambling?"

"Nope," said Jared. "There's been lots of times in my life that I've tried to take you down a few pegs, I'm not denying that. But one thing I would never, ever have done is sell you out to our sperm donor. I just told him to keep your name out of his mouth. I said you were a better parent to me than he was when you were ten years old. And he agreed with me. I think you intimidated him, the way you were always so good at everything and you never patted yourself on the back for it. I was like Dad, I bragged every time I did something right and sometimes when I didn't. He said he replayed it over and over in his head, how you would try to step in and take the beatings for me if you could. Said he was afraid of what would have happened if Pops hadn't showed up on the last night and run him off. Said he didn't know where you came from, you were all Pops and none of him, but I was all him and I had to watch my step."

It wasn't a mystery, now, why Jared hadn't told him about this conversation. "He was wrong," said Booth. "He doesn't know you. He knew that you had a drinking problem, that's all. That's one thing. He didn't know about me and gambling, so he didn't know that we both got the addiction gene. We just fed it in different ways."

"Thanks," said Jared wryly. "I don't know whether I wish you'd been there to say that then or not."

"What did he say next?"

"Nothing. I left. Went straight to the nearest bar and drank my weight in vodka. I hadn't had any in two years and my tolerance had gone to shit, so I ended up puking my guts out like a teenager in a frat house."

Booth definitely understood now why Jared hadn't told him. "Then what?" he asked.

"I walked straight from that bar into an AA meeting and I started over. Got out of the meeting, called my sponsor. Then I called Padme and told her what happened and why. She rescheduled our honeymoon to make sure I'd be at AA every day instead of in some tourist dive where everyone was drinking."

"She loves you," Booth reflected. He hadn't wanted Jared to marry Padme. He'd been very wrong.

"We both married way better than we are," said Jared.

"No argument here."

"I did think about telling you I'd talked to him," Jared continued. "But it wasn't a good time for that kind of conversation. You were in Afghanistan with the blondie chick you dumped Tempe for."

"I never dumped Bones!" Booth objected. "And what have you got against Hannah? You never met her."

"Exactly," said Jared, casually accelerating and making Booth stroke hard to catch up. "If she'd been important, I would have met her. And what I've got against her is that she's not Tempe, but you did get that right eventually."

"No thanks to you."

"What, that one little kiss? It was before I knew what was going on. I didn't get it until the whole Gravedigger thing when she was in my face telling me I don't deserve you. Didn't realize she was in love with you until then. Didn't realize you were in love with her until I realized she was in love with you. Now Padme, she looked at the two of you once and she knew."

"Well, we both married women smarter than we are, too."

"Yes, we did," Jared agreed.

"You never heard from Dad again?"

"Got a letter when he died. Said he wasn't sure whether I'd ever read it but that he was grateful that he'd had the chance to tell me once that he was sorry and that he loved me. Said he wasn't writing to you because he knew there was no way you'd read it at all."

"I wouldn't have. He sent a letter to Pops and Pops made me listen to part of it."

"What'd he say?"

"Same story. He loved us, he fucked up, and he was glad Pops took us in."

"That's all the story there really is," said Jared. "Why are you looking for more?"

"Why did Pops make it some kind of secret from me that he told Dad to get out?"

"Because Dad was his kid and he loved him. Because Dad was our father and you loved him. Because nobody's perfect, not even Pops, and he looked at his life and wondered if there were things he could have done better. That's not a sensation you're familiar with, but most of us are."

"You really think I've never regretted anything?"

"I guess you kind of regretted the time Karen Eisley stole your clothes and left you naked under the bleachers. I always wanted to meet her, but I only met the important ones. Cindy. Sharay. Cam. Rebecca. Tempe."

Booth didn't let Jared change the subject. "I've regretted things, Jared," Booth said heavily. "You know, a couple of months ago, Bones threw me out."

Jared turned toward him, eyes wide. "I know you didn't cheat on her. You don't cheat."

"I gambled. I went ten years, and then… it gave me this high I wasn't getting anywhere else, like I was actually in control of my own fate. I like to be in control," he admitted almost inadvertently.

"I know," said Jared, but not meanly.

"My bookie showed up at the door and threatened Bones and Christine. Bones confronted me, and I knew she knew what I did, but I just kept lying, over and over, right to her face no matter how many chances she gave me to come clean."

"But you're back together now? With the new baby and everything?"

"Yeah. We never broke up. She just told me to move out and focus on getting it together."

"And you did."

"Yeah."

"But you don't go around telling everyone that story. Even though what you did was right. You didn't mean to mess up, but when you did, you fixed things. Kind of like Pops. He didn't mean to keep his son away from his grandsons forever."

"Do you think we would have been better off? If Dad had had some kind of rehab and supervised visitation?"

"No," said Jared, and in that moment he looked like an eight-year-old with tears in his eyes begging to sleep in his older brother's bed. "But I get why Pops had to think that."

"Do you think he would have been better off? If he hadn't had to raise us when he should have been done with that kind of thing at his age?"

Now Jared looked amused. "People had kids a lot younger back then. You're about to have a new kid, but you're about the same age that Pops was when you were born."

The thought struck Booth with a bizarre combination of relief and horror.

"I told you you were really, really old," said Jared, and he took off skating as fast as he could.

* * *

Bones and Padme had returned to the hotel long before Booth and Jared; Booth could hear the sound of the television mixed with their laughter from the corridor.

He used his key to unlock the door, then stood dumfounded at the sight before him until Jared pushed him aside so he could enter the room, too.

It wasn't entirely a shock that _The Treasure of the Sierra Madre_ was playing in the background; for as long as he'd known her, Bones had been convinced that everyone liked _The Treasure of the Sierra Madre_. (Oddly, Booth's grandmother had held the same belief.)

What was a shock was that Bones and Padme had dragged the iron and ironing board out of the closet and were using them, along with a roll of aluminum foil, to make grilled cheese sandwiches.

"This isn't quite how Hank made them," said Padme. "It's actually how my mother made them the summer we drove across the country visiting national parks."

"But we thought that Hank would appreciate the spirit of the tribute," completed Bones.

They spent the rest of the night toasting Pops with squares of grilled cheese.

* * *

The next morning, Booth hugged Jared goodbye. "Thank you," he said.

"I love you," Jared said.

"Love you, too. Come back to this country more often."

"Come to India, just once," Jared challenged. "You by yourself, you and Tempe, the whole family, however you want to do it. You're always invited, whether you screwed something up or whether you want to brag about how perfect you are."

"Same goes," Booth said, and he meant it.

* * *

"Make sure you tell me if you want me to stop. For any reason," Booth reminded Bones as they drove slowly out of Pennsylvania.

"I always have. I didn't need you to stop last time," Bones reminded him in her turn.

Booth ignored that. "Nothing is going to go wrong for this baby. Hank."

"You know that's not a realistic goal."

"No. But I think that's the goal Pops set, and what he ended up with was pretty good."

Bones smiled her softest, most knowing smile. "I agree."

The sun rose higher in the sky, promising a hot summer day. Bones reached for her sunglasses, which somehow made her look even more beautiful. (He liked Bones in all kinds of glasses, not just the ones that played into his librarian fantasy, which she didn't understand but periodically indulged.)

"We need to get baby sunglasses for Hank," Booth decided. "Orange ones to match his Flyers onesie. Show everyone that he's the coolest baby around."

"All right."

"That's the one thing we know for sure. No matter what he does, he'll live up to the name. Hank Booth. It's a good name, isn't it?"

"It is."

"It's the kind of name that gives you hope."

"And love."

"And strength. Hank the Tank."

"The other kinds of strength, too," she said quietly. "Like admitting it when something's bothering you."

"Nothing's bothering me," he said in surprise. "I'm sad that Pops isn't here and he isn't going to know Hank, or even Christine very well. But I'm not… hiding anything."

"I know that. You talked to me, and you obviously talked to Jared, and he obviously said something that helped."

"A broken clock is right twice a day."

"I don't know what that means."

"Yes, you do."

"Yes, I do. But if I didn't, I would still try to understand."

"I can do it myself, but I don't have to." He quoted Pops' letter. "I know."

"Even though you're big and strong, you can still have someone look out for you," she said. "That's what Hank told me that day in the diner when we talked about your father."

"Sometimes I'll still make a mistake," he admitted. "But if I fall, I'll get up again. I promise."

 **The End**

* * *

Auxiliary Disclaimer: _The memory dialog between Hank and Booth upon Edwin's death has been shamelessly swiped from S7's The Male in the Mail._

Author's Note: _Well look at that. Aiming for about 8,000 words and ended up over 30,000. Much like Jared at his worst, I take no responsibility for anything that happened. This fic opted to write itself._

 _Speaking of Jared: I originally intended for this last chapter to foreshadow the events of the Season 11 premiere. Padme was going to be there only under duress to put on a good face for Hank and Jared was going to show obvious signs of drinking and being in trouble. Then the fic wrote that little moment in the first chapter where Jared mimics Hank's flirting, and then the fic decided that it was not going to have anything to do with Jared's death._

 _In the fic's defense, killing off Hank is quite enough angst for Booth, and the show itself wouldn't have regressed/killed Jared if it hadn't been for Brendan Fehr being busy with other work and David Boreanaz being too sick to shoot a normal episode when Season 11 rolled around. So there. This is good!Jared who stopped drinking and wanted to stand on his own two feet back in Season 5. (You know, the guy who bearhugged Booth in his office with a big goofy grin on his face when he came home with Padme in tow. That guy!) We didn't see him because he was on the other side of the world, not because he was in some sort of downward spiral._

 _And yes, Booth and Brennan did go to India for a visit and they had a lovely time. So there, again. Happily ever after._


End file.
